Car Seat Woes

This past week Jackson and Genevieve changed car seats. They moved out of their Graco infant car seats and into the big leagues--Britax Boulevard car seats. I think the twins are happy with the move, but Bentley wasn't. He doesn't like change.

Bentley had to give up his Britax Boulevard that was in my truck. It became Genevieve's car seat. To be honest it was purchased for Genevieve a year ago (while she was in the womb) and has just been on loan to Bentley, but try explaining that to a two year old! He also lost his Boulevard from his dad's car. It became Jackson's car seat.

The Britax Boulevard is the Cadillac of car seats. It's comfortable, high sitting (great views), extra safe (with side impact airbags), and very expensive. Since I lost the Britax Boulevard from my truck, I needed to find Bentley a new car seat and the twins now needed car seats, too.

It was not an easy task to find a car seat with a narrow enough back to fit three across my truck's bench seat. Kara started researching the topic months ago. She passed on the information to me and then she took me shopping a couple of times. She wanted to confiscate the Boulevard in my truck, but couldn't do so until I got a new car seat for Bentley. Unfortunately for her, I struggled with this decision.

There was no clear winner. I like the Britax line of car seats, but they are awfully large and quite expensive. I thought about purchasing an Evenflo car seat. I finally settled on the Radian 65 Folding Convertible Car Seat by Sunshine Kids. Kara found the Radian online. We checked one out at our local upscale children's store. It's a heavy duty car seat (steel alloy frame) with a slim profile. It's advertised as a great car seat to travel with because it folds flat. However, it weighs almost 25 pounds. Imagine carting three of them on an airplane along with three toddlers and a stroller and a diaper bag.

The Radian sits lower than the Britax Boulevard which means Bentley has a harder time seeing out the truck windows. The manufacturer claims lower is safer. The Radian 65 is considerably cheaper than the Britax Boulevard, but a lot more expensive than the Evenflo line.

Cost vs safety vs functionality vs ease of use. It's a wonder I ever made up my mind, but somehow I did. I ordered three Radians through amazon.com. They qualified for free shipping otherwise I would not have purchased them because oversized items cost a bundle to ship to Alaska. They arrived very promptly. One came in slightly damaged and had to be returned and replaced. It was a pretty easy process.

We discovered the Radians will not fit very easily in the truck rear facing, so we'll have to continue squishing the twins into their Graco car seats until they are a year old and can use their Radian seats front facing. Hmmm, would that be a year old adjusted to account for their premature arrival?! I've told Kara to fatten those babies up so they make the lower weight limit for forward facing in the Radian, but now I'm worried that they'll grow out of their Gracos before they grow into their Radians. Yup, I've got the car seat woes--along with Bentley.


Here the kidlets are in their Britax Boulevards. Bentley used to have a window seat, but Kara moved him to the middle. He was not too happy his first trip in his new location. Kara said he clamped his arms tight to his sides and tried to avoid being touched by his siblings. Good luck on that, twingle.