Fun With Car Seats

Sunday night, long after the dust settled from Mom-E's cell phone adventure, she reminds me that we need to wash the cover of Little Brother's car seat.

Doesn't seem like a big deal. Just take off the car seat cover, wash it, dry it, and put it back on. Ta-da!

Not so fast.

We have the Evenflow Triumph 5.

Burn that name into your hard drive--Evenflow Triumph 5--it's in the car seat catalog under "Made by Satan and his minions."

On the one hand, this particular car seat got wonderful safety ratings. (Mom-E is a grand master of scoping out the product ratings and comments before any major purchase. If it didn't get 5.2 out of a possible 5 stars, then it's not good enough for our boys. I defer to her completely.)

On the other hand, I'm certain that the designer(s) of this particular car seat DID NOT HAVE CHILDREN, NOR DID THEY EVER HAVE TO INSTALL A CAR SEAT THEMSELVES!

The problem is that in order to take the car seat cover off to wash you have to:
1. Uninstall the car seat from the car.
2. Unscrew the 6 screws in the back panel of the car seat.
3. Unhook the straps and feed them through the anchors.
4. Slip all 5 points of the 5-point harness through the car seat cover.
5. Actually take off the car seat, wash, dry, etc.
6. Repeat steps 1-4 in reverse order.

I kid you not. The cover will not come off without literally uninstalling the car seat.

Those of you who have installed a car seat (properly) are already feeling my pain. Go ahead and look at your Busy-Dad-E Honorary Engineering Degree. It'll make you feel better.

For those of you who have never installed a car seat, SET ASIDE AN ENTIRE DAY THE FIRST TIME YOU INSTALL ONE. DO NOT WAIT UNTIL LATE AT NIGHT TO DO IT. DOING SO WILL DRAMATICALLY INCREASE THE ODDS OF FOUL LANGUAGE, TEMPER TANTRUMS, AND A YELLING MATCH (OUT OF FRUSTRATION) WITH MOM-E.

And so the simple phrase "let's wash Little Brother's car seat" becomes the answer on Monday to "what did you do this weekend?"

"We washed Little Brother's car seat."

"What else did you do?"

"That's it. It took the whole weekend to do that one thing."

And just think what happens if Little Brother gets nauseated from the smell of a clean car seat and pukes on it...
You get to do it again! Yay, happy day.

Are you appreciating my contempt for the designer(s) of this car seat?

Amazingly, I don't remember being traumatized this time by the process of washing the car seat. I must have amnesia.

However, what I do remember is that apparently it had been A LONG TIME since we last cleaned his car seat. I know this because after I uninstalled the car seat, I shook out ALL of the snacks/junk that had accumulated in the crevices of the car seat, and swept them up into a dustpan. There was enough food to feed a pack of wild, hungry dogs. (Okay, maybe not that much, but I think it totalled about one cup--see the picture below).

I don't want to think about what kind of "bugs" were growing on all of the "treats" under Little Brother's butt. Please don't call the department of child protective services on us. I promise to clean his car seat more frequently (once we buy one that you don't have to uninstall to clean).

Have a good weekend,
Busy-Dad-E