Santi's growing up

My almost-6-month-old Santi (seriously, how did THAT happen? How do I not still have a 3 week old little baby that I just brought home from the hospital? How is it that I don't have to support his head when I carry him all the time? How is it that he's gone from basically a little lump of a baby to a person who can roll over both ways, sit up, babble, play with his hands, play with his feet, recognize my voice and smile when he sees me, cries real tears, eats solid food and is super social? It's crazy to me!)

Anyway, since he's growing up, he's also gaining weight (sorry buddy!) and is now a hefty 18lbs. Which means carrying him and the infant car seat = almost 28lbs. Which carrying for short distances is fine, but carrying for more than that is too hard even for Tito. So we decided to get him his new convertible car seat that will stay in the car all the time. And since we were getting rid of his infant car seat, we had to get him a new stroller since the strollers we have are a jogging stroller (too big to use as a regular stroller in stores and such) and a Snap and Go, which, if not using the infant car seat, we can't use since it's just a stroller base without a seat. I love this stroller by the way, but it's time to move on to his more permanent stroller and car seat.

So after a lot of looking, and after getting one stroller (the Combi Cosmo stroller which we hated because the wheels got stuck all the time, there was no room in the underseat basket - which didn't matter because you can't get anything out of it once the kid is in the seat),we decided that it just generally sucked overall. So we returned it after a week.

Our choice (after a lot of looking and trying out in the stores) for a stroller was the Chicco Liteway


The seat folds all the way down, the basket isn't that big but we don't mind that, and we're getting a system to hang on the back of the stroller anyway to hold his stuff. It's just a really smooth stroller and he was really comfortable in it (whereas with the Combi he cried after being in it for a few minutes.)

And for his car seat, we looked at a lot of different types and brands. We decided on the Evenflo Symphony because it's basically the same as a Britax Marathon at half the price. And this seat will fit him up to 35lbs rear facing in the car, up to 65lbs forward facing in the car and will fit him up to 100lbs as a booster seat, so we don't have to buy him a separate booster seat after he's done with the car seat. And, after reading the reviews, we discovered that it's a good size and will fit in my Toyota Corolla which a lot of the larger convertible seats have a hard time fitting into smaller cars in the rear facing position.

And I found a deal on Amazon.com where the seat was $60 off the regular price! I'm excited about these items arriving (this week!) although it's a little sad that my little baby is becoming a little boy!