car seat is ready

Yes, I said I got the car seat ready for this baby. LOL As of yesterday, I am 17 weeks pregnant. I'm currently assessing the things we have and are getting these things out and ready so that we can start on the real fun: buying everything ELSE we need. Since we gave the crib and all our baby clothes to a friend's sister, we have literally nothing for basics. I'm hoping I can find the pack n' play for us to use until the tax refund comes and I can buy a crib. Hmmm I think we may *not* have fully thought this through before we decided to have baby #5, it may have been better to wait a few extra months so that I had the tax refund to shop. Eh, we'll figure it out.

So, the first thing we got ready is the most important item of all. We can NOT bring the baby home without a proper car seat. Now, if you know me, you know I'm a safety junkie. I keep up with all the latest safety in regards to car safety and my children. We rear-face until they hit the limits of a seat, then we forward face with a harness until they show the maturity required to sit properly in a booster full time (as long as they meet the legal requirements for a booster as well). Currently, I have 3 in boosters and one in belt only (she passes the 5 step test where she sits, no worries!).

So I decided to get out the convertible seat and get it ready today. Cover: cleaned up. Harness: dropped to bottom slots. Infant insert: found, cleaned up, and put on. Rear facing boot: hunted down, wiped down, attached. Now I just need Scott to put the middle seat for our middle row back in the van so I have a place to install the seat. This baby will be riding in the luxury of a Sunshine Kids Radian80 car seat, which rear faces from 5-33lbs and forward faces from 20-80lbs (yes it IS a harness that goes that high, it does NOT do the booster thing at all!!!!) It has a steel frame inside that plastic shell, and is very plush. It was donated to us when Jojo was a baby by the Kyle David Miller Foundation, and it has 4 years left of the 8 year life span (I had to double check the life span, most seats expire 6 years from date of manufacture but some do go to 8 years). This seat should work just fine and dandy for the baby from birth with the infant insert, if my girls' sizes are any indication of the size this baby will be. I can't wait to get this seat back in use regularly.

And for those whose heads are spinning at my using a convertible instead of an infant seat....... if the baby does NOT fit properly in this seat then I shall wait at the hospital with baby while Scott runs to the store to buy an infant seat to use instead. I have one already picked out, and the local WalMart carries it. But we will not be buying it unless the baby NEEDS a smaller seat, or someone decides to look up my WalMart baby registry and buy some of the stuff for us (I'm using it as a checklist for what we still need to buy for the baby, all our needs plus the goodies we want if we have enough money/time).