Rich ♥’s Minivans

My latest obsession had been to figure out the whole car seat/stroller issue. The most convenient and cost effective combination (for one baby) seems to be the infant seat that clips in and out of the car and then attaches to the stroller. Then you buy a new car seat when they grow out of the infant seat and you can still use a stroller.

The problem is that there are very few triplet options for this scenario. Originally I thought we would just have a triplet stroller and 3 car seats that are called “convertible” meaning they stay in the car and convert to a toddler seat when the babies get older (therefore avoiding needing to buy 6 car seat total). Also, these convertible car seats are narrower than the infant seats and can fit 3 across in many cars including our Jeep.

But, the more I thought about it the more I thought that I needed to have the infant seats that clip in and out and then we found a triplet infant seat holder stroller online and I thought I had it all figured out. Okay, we would have buy another set of car seats and a real triplet stroller next year but at least I wasn’t going to drive a minivan off the bat. I thought I was incredibly clever and my Grandma Leona would have been so proud of me for being economical.

But then for some reason I was convinced that my car was wider than the Jeep. This is one of those irrational things that happen to pregnant people. So we took my car to Babies R’Us and asked to borrow the 3 narrowest infant seats I had researched so diligently and took them outside and tried to cram all 3 into the back seat. This is where the wheels came off my whole scheme. I wish I had my camera with me. It would probably work if I wanted to drive around with the back doors open.

About now was when the irrational pregnancy hormones kicked in a little bit and I started to obsess over the car situation. I was convinced that we had to find a car this past weekend because of the following thought process:
-What if I go on bed rest and won’t be able to pick help pick one out because I’m at home?
-I don’t even encourage Rich to go clothes shopping without supervision because of previous catastrophic results?
-What if he comes home with this?
-What if we don’t have a car that fits 3 car seats before the babies are born and we
can’t get them home from the hospital?
-What kind of parents would we be if could only take 2 home at a time and have to come back for the other one?
-Would they even give us the third before calling CPS?

You can see how I got all worked up over this.

So on Saturday morning we headed to the car dealership and test drove the minivan that is hands down the most raved about minivan in the multiples community...The Honda Odyssey
I was being a pouty brat the whole time and when the salesman asked me how I liked it I told him I hated it. Rich on other hand was smitten. Rich now loves triathlons, tiramisu and minivans. He couldn’t get enough of the gadgets, the DVD player, the storage, the cup holders. He was having a love affair with a metallic gray touring edition minivan. I did warm up to it when Rich was talking about how much easier it would be on road trips to Austin or to Wisconsin. He also mentioned how much the pugs would like it.

I was still freaked out about buying a new car when that was not in my master plan. Therefore, I (with help from my mom) came up with an idea of how to temporarily delay Rich’s dream of driving a minivan with a remote controlled DVD player. I realized that the Jeep is wider than my car and if I had a combination of a car seat and infant seats that 3 just might fit across. And I would have a 3rd infant seat stored in the trunk to use with the stroller. I even found the dimensions of the stroller online and measured to ensure it would fit.
So we went back to Babies R Us for the second measurement with a different combination of seats. Rich wanted to go to a different location in case they remembered us from last time and thought we were crazy and obsessed. Guess what? It worked. Rather than buy a new car we just need to buy 4 car seats. I think Rich said something like, “I’m not going to say this again but your mom is really smart.”
After that he did say that we would probably need a minivan but maybe we could wait until the fall...