Cars and car seats for 3u3

mek20

Lets talk cars and car seats.
Come September we will 3u3 and im trying to figure out what to do about cars and carseats.

What kind of car do you drive and what carseats do you use? Do you do 3 across?

bookworm982

I have 3u3. DD and DS1 are on the back seat in Britax Roundabouts. DS2 is on the driver's side bucket seat in a Graco Snugride. The passenger side bucket seat is collapsed. This way I can load all three kids curbside and quickly, even in bad weather. We love this setup, and I highly recommend it. (The brand of seats don't matter...just the vehicle and seating arrangement.) DD will be upgrading to a Radian soon, and DS2 will get her Roundabout. Our logic there is that we want at least one more, and I want to keep one seat collapsed. That means three will have to fit on the back bench, so we need to start investing in narrower seats even though we love our Britax Roundabouts.

jesselayne8

Unless you have a mini van you will probably need something narrow. I will have 3 under 4 but still all 3 will be in 5pt harnesses. dH has a 4Runner and I just got a Honda Odessey. In DH's car we will have 3 diono radians. In my car will can use the Britax seats and the infant carrier that we already have. My 2 and 3yr old will be in the 3rd row and the new baby in the 2nd row. I am removing one of the outside 2nd row seats to have easy access to the 3rd row.

ksteeb611

We began with 4u17months.
Odyssey..2 infants in the back, removed a middle seat, & put an infant and the 1.5 yo in the middle

xuxachi

Right now I have a sedan (Nissan Altima) with 2 Diono Radians and an infant seat in the middle. They fit well enough but it's not ideal. The infant seat is hard to get in/out in the middle and I usually want to get the other kids in/out first, which means I have to go over one of the kids. The other problem is the kids are just too close together and the 3.5 yo sometimes decides to pet the baby's head too much or shove the pacifier in the baby's mouth or - heaven help me - he even once had his shoe up on the baby's head. We're going to need a bigger car!

Latina211508

When I had 3 under 3 we had the all the car seats in the second row. We have a Tahoe and have much more space than a car. But it's still a tight fit. My youngest is in the middle.

mek20

Xuxachi, I didn't even think about that. My oldest (who will be just under 2.5 when Baby #3 is born) will surely be the problem with three across. Especially because I was planning to put him in the middle.

We did just buy a Dodge Grand Caravan, but my husband will be driving the kids in a Subaru Forester...that should be fun for him! 

I was bummed I needed the van, but your post made me realize that I made the right choice! 

Belley2004

When we had our third we upgraded to an 8 seater odyssey. I love everything about it! Now that we are expecting our sixth (ages 5,4,3, and 20 month old twins) we are looking at 12 seater vans. I'm going to miss m automatic sliding doors In the odyssey I can fit two Britax and an infant carrier across the middle row or three cosco/radian seats acrossed the back row. The middle seat can hold a radian/cosco and two Britax all forward facing.

xuxachi

@mek20 - yeah, it's a challenge for some kids to leave each other alone. It continues to be a big problem for us - the other day my DS was pretty aggressively pushing babies head from side to side signing wheels on the bus - I'm very nervous now since it's hard to discipline when your driving. I have implemented a very strict "no hands on the baby's head" at all times rule and plan to bribe (uh, I mean reward) DS for good behavior in the car. If anyone has other ideas, let me know. We are going to try switching around car seats, but that will put the 2yo in the middle, and I'm not sure how that will go. I guess we can only try.

Disneygeek77

We have a Nissan Altima and fit three across.

Two are Diono Radians that are forward facing and one snugride that is rear facing.