Yesterday carseats #5 and #6 arrived on our doorstep. That’s right, we have bought SIX carseats so far. The story goes something like this: originally, way back in August or September 2002, we bought a Cosco Alpha Omega at the Babies R’ Us store down by my mother’s house. Just one, because we didn’t know I had TWO buns in the oven at the time. Then when we later found out we were having two babies, we bought another to match. I wish we had never seen the blasted things. I was so ignorant about baby stuff at the time, and they’re complete pieces of crap. The straps have always had an awful habit of twisting–which got only slightly better after I asked for new clips–and the box totally lied about it being LATCH-ready. No, they were LATCH-compatible, which meant we were supposed to fork over another $60 or $70 for the conversion kits. What bullshit. Installing them was a nightmare and each and every time we had to have the police do it. The weight-limits on the box were a lie too, and this pisses me off the most. It said they were good for 5 to 40 pounds. They twins were almost exactly 5 pounds when they were born, and when we put them in the seats for the drive home, it was comically apparent how wrong this manufacturer claim was. They looked like tiny little socks stuffed into a sea of black fabric and straps. And they were forced into a weird position that didn’t seem like they could even breathe right. Needless to say the trip home was stressful, and I do believe we began shopping for the infant carseats online almost as soon as we got home.

Even better, we later read in our baby book that they list Cosco’s safety record as “abysmal” (I love that word, don’t you?) and had the same complaints we did about everything else (twisty straps, bad design, etc., etc.). They recommended to avoid Cosco altogether. Oh, if only we had known. The fuckers were expensive, too.*

After that disaster came the little infant seats, #3 and #4, and these worked out great for almost a year. I believe they were Graco ones. I loved those–they could snap right in and out of the car with ease, no fuss, no muss. After they outgrew those it was back to the devil’s seats that failed us in the beginning, which is what we were using until today.

We bought the new Graco convertible seats (#5 and #6) because a) we’re fucking sick of the Cosco seats, and b) we needed a second set to go in the RV for trips. Since we won’t be using the RV nearly as much, we put the old ones in there. Installing the new seats in the van was breathtakingly easy using the LATCH system, which is now standard on carseats, THANK GOD.

Oh and it only took about one minute and 30 seconds to clog the vacuum cleaner as I sucked up what was underneath the old ones. Egads.

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Bruce and I have been at each other’s throats a little lately, and though I don’t really believe in airing our dirty laundry all over the internet, I will say most of the issues are nothing new. Hopefully things will get better when our babysitter is back from Panama. We are just trying to keep things quiet and shelved until then, as we have a rule about not fighting in front of the girls.

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I am getting a little tired of the way people are obviously misusing tags in Last.FM’s database…excuse me, what idiot thought Staind constitutes the “chillout” genre? Normally I have a great time listening to the chillout channel, and today it got 90% of the music wrong, playing mostly rap and metal (the latter of which I’m not even going to call music).

* Yes, after much research we had to order the latest seats online, too. WalMart and Kmart seem to carry mostly Cosco-brand seats (this includes Safety 1st), which ought to tell you something.

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