The Mommy and Daddy club

Mattie and I feel that we have passed a number of milestones over the past 30 weeks or so, but we are especially proud of our most recent venture into Babies R Us and the ongoings there. When we put things on our registry we tried to register for mainly things we needed and only a few "Awww how cute" things. One thing we knew that we needed was a car seat/stroller combo, but we thought it would be one of those things we had to save up gift cards and such for. Much to our surprise the travel system we registered for showed up on our front doorstep one day. With no information about who it was from, we lugged it inside and pondered about this generous gift. After finding out (through family networks) that it was from my Uncle Kerri, Aunt Julie, and their daughter Krista we decided to see how well the car seat fit in the backseat of my Jetta. Much to our dismay the car seat did not fit well into the backseat...not as well as other car seats had anyways. So rather than buying a new car (I love my Jetta and could not bear to let it go so soon) we packed everything back up to take back to Babies R Us.

Once there we got help from a store employee in trying out several car seats in the car. We finally settled on the Baby Trend brand (which we knew would work because we tried out a friends earlier in the month). Once we decided on the brand we had two options. This one:

or this one:

Each system had merits, the three wheeler had more of an overall sporty feel and look, while the four wheeler was more compact and was a little "prettier" while still being gender neutral. We liked the ruggedness of the three wheeler and the fact that it had a traction-ey grip on the adjustable handle and that the wheels were real rubber wheels. The green stroller also had an adjustable handle, but not as high of an adjustment (but still plenty high) and had a very tight turning radius. Of course we had to fully try both out so I set up a slalom course in the aisle for Mattie and I to try and steer the strollers around. The last test remained...the folding and unfolding of the stroller. For those who don't know most modern day strollers have a "one hand" capability for folding and unfolding the stroller. So we tried to fold both up...no problems. Now for the unfolding part. Matt unfolded the three wheeler...no problems. Matt unfolded the green Four wheeler...let's try that again...Matt unfolded the green four wheeler...let's try one more time...Matt unfolded the green four wheeler. It was then that Matt and I both thought "What the heck is wrong with this thing" and "We are not getting this one". We could not unfold the stroller one handed, we could not unfold the stroller at all. Convinced that there was some grave malfunction in the mechanism of the stroller we continued to try to unfold the thing. Matt grabbed both ends of the stroller and tried to pull them apart. No luck. I grabbed one end and he grabbed the other. No luck. We thought it was the wheels that were stuck so we "unstuck" them and couldn't get the stupid stroller to unfold. Very glad that we had not bought this stroller we tried to simply get the stroller back in presentation mode so we could take the three wheeler and go. Finally Matt saw a little latch on the side of the stroller, curious about what exactly that did he looked closer. Ding-Ding! The latch was keeping the stroller closed tight all along (making for an even more compact travel system). Once we (quite easily) unlatched the mechanism it popped right open at our command. And Babies R Us now has at least five minuted of footage of us trying to open a stroller.

After much deliberation and the unfolding ordeal we decided on the green four wheeler. It had overall better handling, a smoother ride (which will be important for the sleeping T-Rex), folded up more compactly (thanks little latch), and a nicer aesthetic appeal. We wanted to like the three wheeler more, but just didn't. We made our purchase as Matt drug me away from the Thanksgiving outfits (which I will get one when we know how large Baby T-Rex will be at that point) and headed to the 'Stros game. All in all it was a wonderful adventure. I tried to convince Matt to go ahead and install the car seat in our cars, but he insisted we have plenty of time for that.

We have a check-up on Thursday and I will be sure to post about more perfect T-Rex progress and the wonderful shower from this past weekend!