26. Change J-cub's carseat

Received nice congratulations and a link from the Day Two post on hundreddays.net, big thanks to them. I've also persuaded three other people to join up and get going, one of whom is drawing a picture every day.

The mention on the hundreddays blog made me realise that I haven't made it clear that I'm not going to be doing the items in order. For some of the items (like #7), that would prove impossible, as I have yet to interview anyone so would find it difficult to offer someone a job next Monday.

So today's item was the relatively easy move from a rear-facing car seat to one which faces forward. At just under 9 months, and on the 98th centile for weight and height, J-cub is more than ready. I've been researching a lot recently about which carseat to have. Recent research has shown that it is far safer to keep babies and young children rear-facing until they reach 4 years old. Rear-facing carseats up to this age/weight limit are not readily available in this country though, although a few specialist companies do stock them. They are more expensive than forward-facing ones, and need more room in order to accommodate the child's legs.

We got a new car shortly after J-cub was born, and it became evident that the back seat is much less deep than your average back seat, as his (old) car seat would barely fit. Having taken various measurements and compared them against manufacturers' and specialists' specifications, we realised that there was no chance we were going to get a larger rear-facing seat in there.

So we're sucking it up and going forward-facing as we don't really have any other choice. If anyone reading this is interested in finding out more, there is plenty of information at http://www.rearfacing.co.uk/.

We spent an hour this afternoon in Halfords, we chose the seat, a nice man fitted it, then took it out and got one in a box rather than one that had been on the shop floor, fitted that one, then took it out so I could fit it. J-cub gave it his seal of approval by falling asleep about 5 seconds after we left. It was too dark to get a good photo, so here's a blurry one for now and I'll update it when it's light.

Day 2 - mission complete.