Carseat get: SnugRide 30

With another baby comes another carseat. Now, we have a big car (a Freghtliner-branded Mercedes Sprinter) but we also have a lot of folks to fit in it. So a round of carseat juggling is in order.

Dorothy has a convertible Graco My Ride 65 much like this, although a year older. It’s a fine seat but man is that thing wiiiiiide. And tall! I mean, it fits kids to 46 inches (116 cm), it has to be tall. Anyway, it’s a big seat!

We wanted something a little smaller for Clementine so we would have more options as to where to place seats. We do like the Graco line in general, so I looked at their infant seats.

(A brief aside to those less knowledgeable about carseats: Infant seats are the smaller, baby bucket type seats. They fit younger babies and toddlers, and are only rear-facing. Convertible seats are the larger seats that always stay in the car. They can go from rear facing to forward facing, hence “convertible”. They fit babies from newborn to 40 pounds and beyond.)

A recent trend in infant seats is a welcome one: they are available for taller and heavier infants. They used to go to 22 pounds and 29 inches tall, which my kids would bust rather quickly. (Wee Glees are not really so wee.) Many newer seats go to 30 or 35 pounds, and fit 30 to 32 inches (76-81 cm.) The reason all this matters is: the longer a kid can rear face, the better, as it is much harder on the body to be in a car accident facing forward, especially young bodies with disproportionately heavy noggins and scrawny little necks.

There were two Graco models in the running, the SnugRide 30 and the SnugRide 35. I went with the 30, because I wanted to be sure someone could ease past it to sit in the middle between it and the Barcalounger, I mean, My Ride 65. I got this design for the cover

SnugRide 30
because it was the lightest color, and in Oklahoma summertime the car gets Very Hot. I would have loved it to be even lighter, but there you go.
Thus endeth the long Carseat Ramble! I may thrill you even further with photographs of the install, if you are really, really good.

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