Car seats, bedtime and Christmas

So I took a very big step about a month ago; I turned Emily's car seat forward facing.  I'm mostly ok with it now, but it was hard to do it at the time, and I struggled a lot with whether or not I should.  I know the law says they can turn at 2 years old, but I find that a lot of advice like that is “bare minimum”.  The law is to turn them no earlier than 2, because statistically it’s amazing if the majority of people have their children buckled in correctly, let alone not turning them too early.  So I think the overall consensus is yeah, they’re safer rear facing past two, but if you made it to 2 before turning them, then yay.

I’ve thought about turning her twice before.  Once was this time last year, I even did turn her for one night to go see Christmas lights so she could actually see them, and that turned into a week of keeping her FF and I considered just leaving her that way, but then my husband got into a bad accident and totaled his truck.  I was horrified to think of the what ifs...what if she had been with him, and FF?  My MIL came over to pick her up so I could go get my husband from the hospital (he was ok, just some bumps and bruises) but she didn’t have her car seat with her, so we had to trade cars.  I thought about turning it back RF right then and there before she left with her, but she promised me they were going straight to their house and would drive super slow.  But I did turn her back around the very first chance I got before she rode in the car again.

Then I thought about it again about 6 months ago when I was noticing how hard it was to get her in and out.  But that very night I read an article about a woman who lost her son because she unknowingly had him in a booster before he was ready, and he died in a car crash.  Not quite the same thing, but it was possibly (at least in her mind with the inevitable guilt all parents face in that tragedy) a preventable death and a crazy easy way to still have him here had she just known to keep him in a 5 point harness car seat.  So that was that, not turning her.

I had intended on keeping her RF until she maxed out the weight limit RF in that seat, which is 40lbs.  She has held steady at around 33-34 pounds forevvvvver and even took a long time to get to that.  My guess is she won’t hit 40lbs till she’s at least 5 or around then….she’ll be 4 in March.  My thought process was, even if I am still not jazzed about her being turned around then, we HAVE to because it would no longer be safe to keep her RF past 40lbs in that seat.  So I would have had no choice and the decision would have been out of my hands, therefore I would not stress about it.

But, I started thinking about it again.  It’s been hard getting her in and out for a while now, but especially now with it being winter, she’s got at least heavier layers on, if not a winter coat.  With her legs bunched up, it was a real fight every day to get her buckled over the bulky layers.  And that is one area that I do not agree with the pros, about winter coats in car seats.  Maybe I could get on board with avoiding coats that looks like it has literally been inflated and the kid looks like the stay puff marshmallow man.  But for the average slightly puffy coat, I just don’t believe that the material compresses THAT much to make them slip out of the straps.  I’m just not buying it.
 

When I strap her in with a coat on, her straps are tight and secure.  Yes, I know about the “test” of buckling them in with the coat, taking the coat off and then seeing how loose the straps are.  But again, unless the coat is literally many inches of fluff, it’s not going to compress that much.  Of course the straps are extended more for the coat and too big without the coat…because the material that is making it necessary to make the straps longer to fit, is now gone.  That’s like saying, if you normally wear a medium sweatshirt, you should buy a large or XL if you want to wear several layers underneath it.  But then being shocked when the sweatshirt is too big without the extra layers.

And yeah, I am not a physicist, so I acknowledge that my argument of “it doesn’t seem like a coat would compress that much” isn’t the most solid one.  But that is why there are tests to prove or disprove the theory: aka the crash test dummy.  If you haven’t noticed by now, I take car seat safety very seriously.  There are so many horrible things that can harm and even kill your child, why wouldn’t you take simple measures if it means making your kids so much safer in at least one way?  But, I’ve scoured the internet, looking for crash test dummy videos that show the two tests as being equal, and I have not found a single one.  Not one.

 

Every video I have ever seen, the dummy wearing the puffy coat is not strapped in correctly.  The chest clip (if there even is one) is down at his belly, the straps are often twisted and even slightly off the shoulders and loose, or the video is shown from the side view of the dummy so you cannot really see how the straps are done and if they are correct.  Then surprise surprise, the dummy with the puffy coat comes flying out of the seat during the crash.

But then, the test with the dummy not wearing a coat, is a nice clear shot from the front view, and little dummy kid has his straps tight, on his shoulders like they’re supposed to be and his chest clip is nice and high at his armpits.  Then the crash happens and aww, look at that, he stays put in his seat.  Well no shit, you strap the kid in properly, coat or no coat, and he won’t go flying. 

I can’t even begin to guess why they would want to falsely tell everyone that coats are unsafe in car seats, if they are indeed perfectly safe.  I admit, my stance does sound like a conspiracy theory a little, but again, show me a test where both crashes are completely equal and I'll change my mind.  I thought about the coats (Cozywoggle, which I was a sucker and did buy one….pain in the ass thing, my daughter hated having it shrugged up around her head while in the car, so she’d fling it off, which could have been done from the start using a regular coat that did not cost $150…and the Road Coat) that are specially made (and expensive) that supposedly keep your kid warm while ensuring safety in the car seat, but to my knowledge there are only two companies that I mentioned above and the Cozywoggle just announced the end of their business.  Surely doctors and car seat specialists and news people aren’t jumping on this bandwagon just to help a few entrepreneurs sell more coats.

My best guess is, there have been a few accidents where children were seriously injured who were wearing puffier coats and panic and mass hysteria set in.  But, who knows the conditions of the accident, whether or not the child was strapped in correctly to begin with, or if the car seat itself was faulty somehow.  But the fact of the matter is, if coats were not safe in a car seat and the kid really could be ejected, then there should be a crystal clear video showing the crash test dummy properly strapped in with the coat on, the chest clip where it is supposed to be, and shot from the front angle, showing the puffy coat kid still flying, and the only difference between the two videos is a puffy coat vs no coat.  AND, puffy coats are not the only winter coat available to children.  My daughter has four (yay for grandmas and second hand stores)....a thin but warm Columbia, a pea coat type coat, a thin layered (so the look of puffy without the puff I guess) coat, and then what I could call a true puffy coat, but still not the marshmallow man type puffy coat.  So why say no coats in car seats, why not just advocate against puffy coats?

So anyway, that’s my long winded explanation as to why I think the whole thing is bunk.  And, Michigan winters are coooold.  It's not all or every winter, but it's certainly not unheard of to have many days of below 20 temps and even some below zero temps like we have had for the past week or more.  I would not want to have to take my coat off and get into a cold car…yeah yeah, I have auto start, but in reality, the new factory auto starts are shit and do not really run long enough to warm up the car, and it's just blasting cold air when you get in.  And you can't autostart it from far away inside a store or someplace.  Is being cold less of a concern when the alternative could be serious injury or death?  Absolutely, but not when the theory cannot be proven to be true without seriously altering the test crash conditions.

So anyway, the options were to struggle every day to get her buckled in RF, or turn her around, not struggle and fight with her, and know that I kept her safer for much much longer than most anyone else I know with small kids.  Yep, that’s the winner.  She LOVES her new view.  She was just squealing and laughing with delight the whole car ride that first day she was turned.  She can now see things as it’s coming, rather than as they go away, and she can completely get in and out of the car seat and car without my help, which is nice some days, but not others….think rain or cold wind that feels like instant frostbite, and having to stand there in the rain or cold, waiting for the little sloth to slowly climb up into her seat so I can buckle her in.   I made this decision just in time, since we went to see Christmas lights the very next night.

 

So, something else I’ve been struggling with lately is bed time.   I had a small TV in my office so that I could put a movie on for her and I could get some work done if I needed to start working prior to her going down for quiet time.  Months ago, my husband decided a fun treat would be to put it in her room for one night and she could watch a movie in bed.  Well, I’m pretty sure that was in early summer (or possibly earlier) and it is now January and the TV is still in there.  Oh wait, it gets better.  Since we cut the cord with cable, she needed a DVD player so she could actually watch something on it since our local channels suck, so I took the small one out of my home gym.  And last summer we bought a Roku express (we have a Roku of some sort on all of our other TV’s since cancelling cable) to take to the camper.  It’s tiny, and does absolutely no good at the camper when we’re not there, so we bring it home with us each time, so yes, she also has Roku on her tv.  She’s 3 years old, and has her own TV with a DVD player and Roku.  Can you say spoiled?

But, I could take it out of there any time, I know….so I can’t complain about her being spoiled in that sense.  But I just dread the fight (and the peaceful quiet time I get while she’s in her room watching TV) of taking it away.  So there for a while we were cool with her watching a show or movie during quiet time.  She rarely naps anymore, but I do expect her to go to her room and stay in bed and be relatively quiet, for a couple hours a day so I can work and recharge myself, and so she is in the quieter environment to sleep if she decided to.  Most days she sits in bed and plays, and/or watches a movie, but there are plenty of times she either curls up willingly, or sleep takes over and we get in a successful nap.  I am totally fine with her watching TV during quiet time.

But I didn’t want her watching a movie at bed time.  I felt it was bad enough that our 3 year old has her own entertainment center set up in her room, but to let her watch a movie every night before bed too?  Oye.  So for a while, we were pretty strict with a movie at quiet time, but not at bed time.  Then on the occasional night when I really had to get to work, and we had gotten home late from a grandparents' house, I’d cave and let her watch something because it meant an easy bed time, and I could either get to work sooner, or I could enjoy my limited time to myself sooner.  But like a good drug, I became addicted to the easy bedtime.  No fights, no tears, no begging me to lay with her or snuggle her or read her just one more story.  No more asking for water, or saying she has to potty just so she can sit on the pot for 15 minutes, never really having to go in the first place.

But I struggled with it at the same time.  Am I creating a monster?  Is she going to be so spoiled rotten she makes Veruca Salt look like a choir girl?  Am I giving up all power and control by allowing this?  I was embarrassed to admit to other moms that I let her watch tv at bedtime, without feeling the need to hang my head in shame as I told them.  Then finally I decided ya know what, not every battle is worth fighting.  Bed time used to take anywhere from 15 to 45 minutes.  I would get angry, I’d yell, I’d be stressed because I’d be looking at the clock, knowing that every minute that went by meant I would have to work that much later into the night.

Finally I said screw it.  I’m a mom, its in my job description to be unfairly judged for a whole list of things I am “doing wrong” with my child.  So if I am going to be judged anyway, why not make bed time easier and more peaceful?  Now, we get ready for bed (which she still somewhat protests on occasion, so it must not be that wonderful) I turn on a movie for her, I read her a couple books, I turn on her nightlights, give a hug and kiss and say goodnight….then I do not hear another peep out of her all night.  Prior to the TV, she’d often take up to an hour to fall asleep, sometimes even longer, and that sometimes included crying for me so she could beg for something else that would delay bedtime. 

But now, I’d say she regularly falls asleep within a half an hour, but sometimes more like within 10-15 minutes.  The TV being on never disrupts her sleep, and if it plays in a loop like it often does, she has something to do when she wakes up before me, because for some reason she refuses to get out of bed and come get me.  I still occasionally question if it’s a good idea or not, but I feel so much better once I decided I did not give a shit what everyone else thought (or maybe more importantly, the bad things I was thinking about myself) and just enjoy our new hassle-free easy bed time. 

Maybe it will come back to bite me one day, but oh well.  I am sure lots of things will.  I never had a TV or any kind of noise in my room when I was a kid, but here I am, every night whether I am freezing at night or not, I have to turn on my fan next to my bed for the white noise.  So crutches can and often do come up later in life, despite not needing or having one earlier. 

So, Christmas.  My kid was fucking nuts about Christmas.  She was 10 months old for her first Christmas, so definitely one of the older points for a first Christmas, but obviously she still didn't know what was really going on.  For her second, I think she liked the lights, and getting the toys, but she didn't have much interest in opening the presents, nor did she even seem to understand that presents were in there.  Her third Christmas she was definitely more into it, and I thought it was a lot of fun, but this year she was full blown into Christmas, and it was so much fun to watch.

I loved Christmas as a kid, I still do.  But ya know, there for a while it got pretty sucky.  I remember one bad year in particular, I had just woken up at like 1pm on Christmas day, had no one to celebrate with until I went to my dad's later in the day, and I was still moping about a break up a few months prior when my best friend called to announce her engagement.  Yay!  Not a good moment for me.  Of course once I met my husband it got a little better, but there was still something very anti-climatic about two adults sitting around the tree, opening presents....especially when I had to basically threaten to leave him every year when he refused to go shopping until Christmas Eve.  I'll bet, as sucky as it is to work retail on Christmas Eve, it's got to be somewhat entertaining to watch all the clueless men stumbling around, trying to figure out what to get their wives at the very last minute.

Sorry guys, but I know most women are done shopping in June.  Actually this year I was way off my game.  I bought the last present I needed to buy a few days before Christmas, and I put off wrapping until the weekend of.  But Ryan was even worse this year, it's January 5th and I still don't have a present.  Haha, but he didn't forget...well he kind of did, but it was well intentioned at first.  We had first decided that our new recliner was going to be our gift to each other.  A friend who works at a furniture store had two 50% off coupons that she could give out, and we got one.  It's a rather high-end store too, so I was really excited to go pick out a nice chair that might actually last more than a few years.

So we went one day after a matinee date while the kid was at Nana's, and picked out this nice leather one with power recline and had a usb outlet built into the chair.  Sweet, no more digging behind the chair to plug the phone charger back in when the dog runs through there and unplugs it.  It wasn't one of the top top chairs, but it was nicer than some.  But like an idiot, I forgot about the fine print.  The 50% off was to be applied to original price only.  Plus sales tax isn't part of the coupon which I knew, but the store makes you take delivery, which is $100 and also not eligible for the discount.  So this chair that was on sale for $849 would be $1200 with the "coupon".  Are you fucking kidding me?  Why even bother, and make it out like you're this wonderful company giving away these awesome deals to employees' friends and family.  So by then I was too pissed off to even consider getting it at the sale price without the coupon, because that still would have been close to $1000 when I briefly thought we could get that chair for around $575 after tax and delivery.  

So now we had no gift for each other, so we decided on getting each other just something small.  I got him some beard pomade since he had been trying to grow his beard out but gave up when it got too itchy, and a graphic tee he had posted on facebook that he said he liked months ago.  To my surprise, the shirt, which was not expected to make it till after Christmas, arrived even a couple days early.  So he comes to me a few days before Chrismtas and tells me that he can't get my gift at the store nearby, and would have to go to another store about 45 minutes away.  I said in Christmas shopping traffic?  No, I can wait till it's back at our store.  Then I asked if he could order it online....he said he could, but when I saw the bank statement I would know exactly what it was.  So on Christmas eve we "exchanged gifts", I gave him his and he told me what mine was.  He's getting me a palm tree charm for my Pandora bracelet to commemorate our Hawaii trip.  Nice.  Although now I think he has forgotten.  So the dilemma....do I mention it, or at this point do I just say eh, we might as well save the money?  I don't know.

So anyway, now that Em is old enough to really love Christmas, it's like ten million times better than when I was a kid and loved Christmas.  Seeing her face light up when she heard Santa bells on the radio, telling me she wanted something and then said ok, I'll tell Santa!  Every morning she got up and excitedly ran around the house, looking for her elf,  Mixi.  I never wanted to do Elf on the Shelf...not because of the creepy aspect, and I am so not above using fictional elves to try to get my kid to behave.  But I just cannot stand jumping on the bandwagon of whatever big thing everyone is doing.  I've even not done something that I've kind of wanted to do, just because everyone else is doing it.  I HATE trendy stuff, and I hate even more that I think a lot of sheep do some of these things just because it is trendy.  I swear you could probably get people to walk around with dog shit on their head as long as a few top fashion magazines and someone like Kim Kardashian said it is the latest hot thing.  

But, my husband, the big child, insisted on getting an elf last year.  Fine, whatever, he took care of moving it every night last year, so I didn't care.  She did seem to like it, so that's cool.  But this year, on the nights that he didn't move her before work, I did it.  But I got really into it, and it was fun.  I took to pinterest for some cool ideas.  One night Mixi got in Em's book wagon and hooked up her my little pony's and went for a ride....another night she was roasting some marshmallows over a candle flame.  That one was fun to do, I took some mini marshmallows and put them over a lighter flame long enough for them to brown a little bit, and I burned a few on purpose.  Em has this tiny little Beauty and the Beast tea set....the tea cups are so tiny, like smaller than a penny, so I set them out and had the marshmallows on the saucers and put the tea cups out like she was drinking tea with her marshmallows.

One morning she found Mixi in the fridge with a washcloth wrapped around her to try to keep warm, and one day she found her "asleep" on my printer after a wild night of photocopying herself.  I swear I had more fun with that damn elf than she did, and that's saying a lot because she loves her.

So Christmas was great.  On Christmas eve we went to church and then to my brother and sister-in-laws for dinner and to open presents with my family.  Emily had a blast having her uncle at her beck and call all night, and she loved playing with their new-ish kittens, who are now both full grown and so big.  She got a Leapstart from my dad and stepmom, the one that has books that you put in it and a special pen for interactive learning.  My stepmom had originally wanted to get her a tablet type one, but she already has a Kindle Fire.  Even though the Leapfrog one would be more educational, I was worried the two devices would be too similar and she would neglect one for the other.  She got some new clothes, a koala crate, and a wearable blanket with a cat head for the hood.

We got home late, and told her that we thought we might have seen Santa landing on a roof a few blocks away, so she had better get to bed so he didn't pass our house.  I didn't hear much from her once we tucked her in, so I don't think the dreaded Christmas eve insomnia has hit her yet.  So once she was in bed we ate the cookies she put out for Santa and we put her presents under the tree.  This was the one time I am so grateful for a child who refuses to get out bed and come out of her room on her own.  We were pretty much in the clear to go get her presents as soon as we said goodnight and shut the door.  We didn't have to worry about being caught mid-present delivery. 

So Ryan and I stayed up a little later, drank some eggnog out of our Marty Moose glasses and watched some TV.  Christmas morning I think we woke up around 10 or 10:30 and we had to actually wake Emily up.  Haha, I know all parents hate us.  My SIL said their kids had them up at 6:30am, and even that was after telling them to get their butts back to bed earlier.  Emily is just a really mellow kid for the most part.  I mean, she's loud and a bull in a china shop when she wants to be, but stuff that riles other kids up doesn't seem to faze her.  Even next year and the year after I can see her just casually waking up on Christmas morning, not being in a huge rush.

I hated to do it because half the fun of Christmas is not knowing what you got, and tearing the wrapping paper off.  But her Barbie Camper was just too big for any boxes we had, and since I got it second hand, it obviously didn't come in a box.  So that was the only gift I didn't wrap, I left it sitting out in front of all the presents with a big pretty bow tied around it.  So when she came out in the morning it was the first thing she saw.  I think she was kind of in awe over it all.  She loves her camper, she's played with it every day since.  We also got her the Happy Helpers' Headquarters, which she lit up when she opened it and even hugged the box.  That child is wild for her Minnie Mouse.  She's loved Minnie since she was a little baby, and I love that Minnie hasn't been a phase so far. 

So also got the Seapony lagoon from the latest My Little Pony movie.  She got the game Pie Face, and some Little Golden Sheriff Callie books (which have put her back on a Sheriff Callie kick, we watched her all day today), two seaponies to go with her lagoon and the one that it came with, and in her stocking she got some candy, a Minnie Mouse play dough set, a can of slime (that farts when you put it back in the can, oh good), a Shimmer and Shine "make up" set, a flower magnet from Hawaii that she loved, oh and she got the mama and baby turtle she asked Santa for.  She was excited for sure, but I was hoping for some recognition that she got the one gift she asked him for, but she either didn't make that connection or just didn't express it.  I think she got a couple other things as well...I went a little overboard with her stocking.  We have a stocking for Kayla too of course, and we always buy her a new stuffed animal for Christmas to put at her grave, so the stuffy goes in her stocking so it's not empty.  But I bought so much damn stuff for Emily's stocking, I had to use Kayla's too.

I definitely went overboard with her regular gifts too.  I stayed within budget, but I'm a good shopper and got a lot of good deals so I got a lot for the set amount, which she of course does not need.  But, it was technically her first Christmas that she was really really into...I'll go easier next year.  So we relaxed for a bit and then got ready to go to Christmas dinner at Ryan's parents'.  Dinner was great and she had fun playing with her cousins, and she got great gifts from all of them too.  Some more clothes, and her aunt accidentally got the seapony lagoon for her too, but when Em opened it she jumped up and exclaimed another one!!!  She was so excited.  So also got her a duplicate of one of the seaponies we got her, to which Em was very excited about too.  We kept the pony because it doesn't hurt to have two, but she'll take the lagoon back and get something else, there is really no need to have two of those. 

So now hopefully we can get the basement cleaned up soon and get some of the toys down there.  My gym is in one corner of the basement, and Ryan's mancave is in the other.  But we've decided to move his mancave into the center of the basement and basically make it a family room (but I did give him permission to decorate as he likes as long as it's tasteful).  We were going to make his old mancave into a playroom for Em, but it just makes more sense to have her playroom where my gym is, which is right next to where the family room will be, it's really just an extension of the space. 

So right now my gym is full of my equipment, some of her toys, and a ton of laundry that Ryan just never does.  So we've got to clean out the mancave so we can move my gym over there, and then spruce up that space for her playroom.  Then when I go down there to work out, she can play, or when we're down there hanging out once we get the family room done, she has her own space to play in.  I wish we could have it all done right now.  I'm dying to get some of these toys out of the living room, and I am also having to work out in the living room which isn't fun.  Some day.