Car Seat Craziness

Whoever designed car seats that have to be taken completely apart to be cleaned obviously never had kids who got car sick. A long time ago, when Hannah was about 1, we were driving home from up North. Suddenly, I could smell bananas. "Do you smell bananas?" I asked Scott (for it seemed quite strange). I turned around to see if Hannah had somehow unearthed a banana from somewhere and, lo and behold, she had puked all over herself. And yes, she had bananas for dinner. So began my intimate acquaintance with car seat disassembly and reassembly. After removing the entire harness system and all the associated clips and buckles, I always feel a slight amount of trepidation when putting it all back together. Did I do it right? Should I really be allowed to assemble a car seat and all it's multiple component parts?

Then one night, literally 5 minutes from our destination, Jacob threw up. Great. Apparently, he gets car sick too. Hannah was very excited. "Look, Jacob puked! I didn't know he did that like me!" However, unlike Hannah, Jacob is not old enough for Gravol.

Tonight, after a long drive I pulled up to the house and turned the car off. It had been a good drive. I actually remembered to give Hannah her Gravol and Jacob slept most of the way. I let Hannah out and went around to Jacob's side. He looked up at me, opened his mouth, and projectile vomited. Three times. I was so close to having him out of the car! And trust me, I would rather he had been sick all over me than all over his car seat.

You would think with all of my experience taking apart the car seat I could do it with my eyes closed. At the very least, you would think it would be painless and quick. But no. Those stupid plastic harness guides are next to impossible to get out. I have never not broken a sweat removing them. Not to mention, the lovely sensation of having one hand feeling blindly through sticky puke while the other hand tries to pinch the plastic lips together from the bottom. While attempting this feat, the actual car seat has to be held in an awkward angled position allowing exposure to both the bottom and the top, which doesn't really help since you can't see what you're doing anyway because the harness guides are recessed and hidden behind other parts of the car seat. Incredible design. Then for the cleaning, most of the parts are "surface clean only with a damp cloth". A damp cloth? That's just not going to cut it. Scott wanted to take the whole thing to the car wash and pressure wash it, but we compromised on using the garden hose to blast off most of the mess. It worked a lot better than a damp cloth! Now I just have to wait for everything to dry and then I have the joy of trying to put it all together again. I can hardly wait.