car seat dilemma solved...hopefully

Although date night consisted of going to Babies R Us and we spent a lot of time on Saturday at Buy Buy Baby, we still had a good weekend.  Hubby is almost done with school and didn't need to spend much time studying.  It's going to be so nice to have him back full-time after Wednesday!  This afternoon he has his interview for the Air Traffic Control position in Albuquerque, almost exactly a year after he initially took the ATC test in Dallas last December.

This morning we dropped off the First Years stroller and car seat we bought at the front desk for UPS to pick up and take back to Amazon.  We made a crucial discovery Friday night when we took our car seat to BRU to check out the stroller frames, it doesn't fit in our tiny car.  Sort of a deal breaker as we aren't willing to buy a new car for our car seat.  It was really hard getting it in and out and I can only anticipate it getting worse once there's a 10 pound baby in the seat.  Plus we'd have to move up the passenger seat to an uncomfortable position.  I don't think anyone would be happy on our long road trip to Oklahoma City next year for Albert's 6 months of ATC training.

I am putting the First Years True Fit Convertible Car Seat at the top of the list once we start looking since it received an A in Baby Bargains and I like the quality and ingenuity of the First Years products.

So we checked out the Chicco car seat at BRU which happens to fit quite well in a Yaris.  We could get it in and out of the car and only had to move up the seat a little bit.  The Chicco sort of fits in the Snap-n-go, not as well as I'd like, but well enough.  So by the time we left BRU on Friday night we had decided to go with the Chicco, again.  We liked the quality of the seat, but not the weight.  The sales people had been really trying to get that sell and were sad we decided to wait to actually make the purchase.

When we got home we started thinking about the Graco.  We didn't really check it out since the Chicco was smaller, but the merits of the Graco started standing out to us (light weight, has it's own stroller frame) and by Saturday morning we had decided to get the Graco SnugRide Infant Car Seat, Lotus with our 20% off coupon at Buy Buy Baby.  Before purchasing we thought we'd better take the car seat out to our vehicle to make sure it fit.  Unfortunately it did not so we went back to the Chicco.

After doing some research on-line we found that Chicco has a new KeyFit Infant Car Seat that only goes up to 22 pounds.  We haven't been able to confirm the weight of the seat, but everyone on various message boards seems to be in consensus that since it holds a smaller baby it should be lighter than the Key Fit 30.  We've done a lot of research on the 22 vs. 30 pound debate and are convinced that we will not need a seat that fits a 30 pound baby and we'd much rather have a light seat. 

There's only one style right now.  It looks pretty good, very gender neutral.

KeyFit Infant Car Seat, 22 lbs

They don't sell the new seat in any of the stores we've looked at - the associates hadn't even heard of it, but we did find it on-line at Wal-Mart.com for pretty cheap so Saturday night we went ahead and had it shipped to the store (save us the shipping costs) and we should be able to pick it up in 7-10 days.  We feel pretty confident that this will suite our needs (not just our wants), but I guess we'll see if we like it when we see it.  The moral of the story, is to put the size of the car seat vs. the size of your car at the top of the list of deal breakers for car seats.  It definitely wasn't something we thought about in searching for seats.

We toyed around with the idea of getting a Baby Jogger City Mini, but realized that the car seat attachment costs more than the Baby Trend Single Snap N' Go Stroller so we're going to put off that purchase until the baby is older.  I would recommend checking it out though, it collapses so beautifully and folds up pretty small.  The sales associate said that it can fit in a Mini. 

We can use our 20% off coupon on the Snap N' Go stroller and get it for $50 at Buy Buy Baby, but we're going to wait until January since the coupon doesn't expire for awhile and who knows, maybe there will be some after Christmas sale or maybe we can get it for super cheap on Craig's List.

We decided to keep the baby bag we bought from Amazon.  It's pretty stylin' and looks like it will work well.  Now on to picking a pediatrician.