The Big 2-0

I took Ellie for her check up on Thursday and we got the news we'd been waiting for. Elise has finally reached 20 pounds (20lbs 5oz actually - she is in the 22nd percentile)! Why is this such exciting news you ask? Because we can officially turn her car seat around! The law is that your child has to be a minimum of one year and 20 pounds in order to turn the car seat forward facing.

As we have mentioned, Ellie is not a big fan of the car. Typically if she's not sleeping she's hysterically crying. And she usually won't sleep for more than an hour, which makes long trips slightly nightmarish. I guess it's fair to say that she has gotten a little better than she was as in infant; she doesn't ALWAYS cry when she's not asleep. There have been times where she's gone an entire 20 minute car ride without crying (maybe two max). But the point is that she hates the car, so in turn, we hate taking her in the car. There is only so much of her "get me out of this deathtrap!! why are you doing this to me?" that a parent can take.

So we came to the conclusion that the reason that she hates being in the car so much is because she gets car sick from facing backwards. Heck, I get sick riding backwards so it's not that much of a stretch. Add that to the fact that she doesn't spend much time in the car, and you have the seeds for car-hatred, plain as day. 1.5 miles to and from daycare 3 days a week is pretty much it, other than the occasional trip 20 minute to BJ's. We live in an area where we can walk to the store, doctor, playgrounds, etc, so she has never had to get used to being in the car.

Back to Thursday, when we got the big news that we could finally turn the car seat around and thus all of our car problems would be behind us. It was perfect timing, because we were going to be driving down to Marty's parents house (they live about an hour away) later that night. When I put her in the car, she did seem pretty excited. She could see everything! Her mom kept turning around and saying hi and that made her laugh! But the novelty wore off in about 5 minutes, and she screamed for nearly the rest of the ride. However, upon further discussion, we realized that she'd just woken up from a nap and didn't have dinner before we left so we came to the conclusion that she was just cranky because she was hungry. Round two: She spent the night at Gram and Grandpa's Thursday so on Friday night it was time to make the hour trip home. This was the real test. She was well fed and it was bedtime so she should just sleep and be happy, right? Of course not! She laughed and played with us for about 15 minutes and then screamed the rest of the way. But upon further discussion, we realized that it was bedtime; she was just over tired.

Round three: Saturday, we had to go to Lowe's, which is about 20 minutes away, so what better time to test out our forward facing car seat for real this time? She was well fed and well rested, and it's just 20 minutes there and 20 minutes back. This time, the magic that is the forward facing car seat surely would shine, right? Wrong again! Cry, cry, cry! I actually think she may have cried less when the car seat was rear facing! However, upon further discussion, we realized that the drive to Lowe's has tons of traffic lights, so it's a lot of stop and go. Who likes that? Maybe we'll test out the car seat for real, for real tomorrow...