Yarn

One of the reasons that I laugh at myself is that despite my young age (and most say even younger appearance), I regularly visit my neighborhood senior center. They have knit and crochet groups that meet every so often and I try to go. I went this morning and did some crochet. One of the draws of going is that they sell yarn cheap. I think people donate what they have leftover from completed projects, and perhaps some stores donate whole skeins they didn't sell for whatever reason. Anyway, it is good yarn but cheap. As I was going through the selection today, I bought up just about every skein of babyweight yarn they had. And when I got home and was putting it away, I remembered some baby-colored fabric I had purchased at a similar type of sale this center had many years ago. I bought it back when we were just starting to think of trying to get pregnant and stored it in a bottom drawer, assuming I would pull it out in just a few months. It's been so long I had forgotten what I had.

So today I pulled out my secret stash of baby fabric and stored it with my new stash of baby yarn, planning projects in my head. Maybe there is some excitement hidden in me somewhere. But I'm still not sure I should let it out.

Vindicated

Yesterday as we were shopping for baby gear, my FIL was a big advocate of the Recaro car seat. What mainly drove him in that direction is that Recaro apparently also makes race cars and he was all into buying a race-car type car seat. And he tried to argue that if they can make something that is safe enough for a race car, the baby car seat should be super safe. I was not so convinced. And the race-car factor did not really impress me either. My main problem with the Recaro, however, is that the infant car seat with separate base really seem like the best option so you don't have to risk waking a sleeping baby to get them out of the car. Especially since we have two cars and would otherwise need two car seats.

Then we started looking at strollers and I was all into the higher end strollers. My ILs asked why I liked them and I said truthfully, "that's what all the cool kids have." They did not think that was a very good reason. But once I pointed out that it seemed just as good of a reason as wanting a car seat made by a race car manufacturer because you dream of owning a sports car, they conceded the point.

And then I came home and started really doing research on car seats. And I feel completely vindicated! Not only does all the advice seem to fall in line with idea that while the convertible car seats meet minimum standards for infants, the infant carrier car seat just fit them better. But the true test came when I looked up the safety ratings at the NHTSA. My preferred car seat is more highly rated than the race car seat!