3 kids can sometimes seem like A LOT of kids. Mostly when I remember I only have 2 arms, or when I recall there are only 2 grown ups in this house, or when I think about squeezing them all in one vehicle.
The bad news is there really isn’t anything I can do about the 2 arms or 2 adults thing. (I mean, unless we take on a sister wife, which… maybe?) The good news is we managed to get 3 car seats in the back of Scott’s car this week, and I breathed a huge sigh of relief.
We plan to sell my Jeep Grand Cherokee before the baby is born, and upgrade to a 3 row vehicle. It will likely be the Honda Pilot. We test drove it last fall, LOVED it. LOVED the way it worked for our family (and YES, we considered a minivan so thank you in advance for not telling me how we should really consider a minivan). We are also currently test driving a Chevy Tahoe for the week, but so far the Pilot is still our front runner.
Anyway, we’re putting that off as long as possible because we like not paying for the cars we’re driving as long as possible. Not exactly thrilled at having another car payment, but hopefully we can time it so that we’re not paying on a new car until we’re done paying for Kendall’s pre-school (summer program). So the moral of that is I’m not too worried about the car seat situation for my vehicle, but I was worried about Scott’s car.
Magic Beans, a baby and kids retail store based out of Boston with a fantastic online shop- mbeans.com, hooked me up with 2 new carseats, and we managed to figure out the perfect combo to make all 3 work across the back seat of Scott’s 4 door sedan.
We wound up keeping Kendall in his Britax Frontier booster seat that’s he’s had for about 2 years now. That’s behind the driver’s side. Leyna switched out of her Britax Marathon and into a Diono Radian RXT. She’s in the middle seat. The baby will be riding in a Chicco Keyfit 30 infant car seat behind the passenger side.
It was like solving a complicated puzzle, and there were a lot of safety factors to take into account. I consulted with a couple friends who are certified child passenger safety technicians. This seemed like the best combo for the 3.
The big, huge difference was moving Leyna out of the very wide Marathon and into the very narrow RXT. I was worried it was going to be too narrow for her at first. I mean, she’s not a petite girl, but she seems comfy in it. We’re just going to have to make sure she knows not to use baby’s face as a foot rest.
(I’m really not too worried about this. If it’s a huge deal, we’ll try to switch her seat and Kendall’s, but I’m hoping she’ll be able to figure out that’s just not a thing we do when there’s an actual baby in there.)
I loved looking around the MBeans.com site for the best seats. They had every seat I was considering (and that most people recommended on a very insightful thread on my FB page). Sometimes it’s nice to look at an actual baby/kids store for a curated collection of the best stuff over just randomly scrolling through reviews on Amazon. I knew that whatever I ordered from MBeans.com was going to be great, because they only carry great stuff.
In fact, as I started to go through the rest of the products they sell, I found so many of my very favorite, tried and true items for baby- things we have used and loved for years. I even started a new Pinterest board called Tried & True For Baby, and pinned stuff I can personally vouch for that worked great for my family and my friends’ families.
So I’m really excited that I get to offer one of you a $100 store credit to Mbeans.com! Because I know you will find something (probably lots of things) that will be really useful for you if you’re expecting, have a baby, or a toddler.
To enter, you’ll need a Pinterest account. All you have to do is head to the MBeans.com site, check out what they have to offer, and pin something you would like to get if you won. You can pin it to whatever board you want.
Follow the directions and enter via the Rafflecopter widget below.
*Disclosure- MBeans.com provided me with the carseats at no cost to me in exchange for this post.