My sewing machine is up and not accessible due to all this flooding business here and so I don't have any new projects to show off but I hope to have my baby down and working in the coming weeks. I have so many things I have started that need to be sewed and finished.
Lately, I have been busy read Baby Bargains. I highly recommend this book for anyone expecting or with a baby. It's got so much information in it and lots of good advice. Get the newest one if you pick one up. It's the one with the green cover.
While reading this book (I have read the whole thing now) I have been hit with the travel system (stroller & car seat) combo vs. buying the car seat and stroller separately decision. I prefer to buy them together so they match and I save money so I picked out the two car seats I like most (with the best safety ratings, of course). Here is what I have come up with.I chose both of these because they seem to have good strollers. We walk a lot and once the baby grows out of the infant car seat they will continue to use the stroller. The first is the Cortina Travel System by Chicco and is made up of the Chicco Cortina Stroller and the Chicco KeyFit Infant car seat and costs $289.99. The second is the Quattro Tour Sport Travel System - Boone by Graco with a SnugRide car seat and costs $269.95.
Pros/Cons
The Graco stroller is a bit heavier than the Chicco but holds more weight and I have a minivan so I'm not too worried about the space it takes up in my trunk. As far as the car seats go I have heard the Chicco won't sit on a grocery cart but that's not too big of a problem for me since we usually shop as a family at the grocery store so I would have extra hands. I also don't think the cart top is the safest anyways and would most likely use a sling to tote around the baby in the situation. Both car seats go up to 20-22 lbs and although both brands now have infant seats that go up to 30 lbs. I just don't want to lug around a 30lb. baby in a car seat. By the time they reach about 20-30 lbs. they are usually a year old and ready to face forward (in my experience) in the car seat and these seats only face backwards. So I will save myself the extra money and spend it on a convertible seat when the time comes. They can be quite expensive.
We are hoping to find out the sex of the baby in the coming weeks and if it's a girl the Chicco stroller is a little masculine but I believe this brand carries different color combos as well. My next step is to test drive them both which I plan to do in the coming months (gotta get to a big city to see some selection) and decide which one will work best for us. After reading Baby Bargains, I feel like a pro in this area and I am sorry if I put you to sleep with my last paragraph.
2 comments:
Those are solo cute. When our firstborns came around this stuff wasn't nearly as cute! We've run the gauntlet on carseats in the last 6 years. My babies are always super big by 3 months ( Mav is already 27lbs! ) We found an amazing carseat last year. It called the Sunshine Radian And it is the only infant through 100 lbd seat in the market and it folds flat and it's made if Steele! Love it. You might like it. We like the idea of only one carseat purchase for years and the five point harness is safest. Any belly pics to post?
Thanks Cierra for the car seat info. I will definitely check that one out. No belly pics for me...yet. I will probably try to get some good pregnancy photos in a few months but the photographer I wanted to have do the photos lives in AZ and so I might have to take them myself. We'll see.
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