Xiaoniu 小妞

Last weekend we broke down and bought a new car seat for the little one. Sue and her sister did some wheeling and dealing and were able to get a good one at a pretty good price. Not the most expensive available, but not cheap either. A nice middle of the road seat that has good ratings. It is a Cosco Alpha Omega Elite Convertible Car Seat - Grayson:

After installing it into Sue’s car and then reinstalling into my truck late last night I really see why there is such a love and hate relationship with this car seat. Some people love it, others can’t believe they spent money to buy the thing.

Installing it is a chore, but once it is in it works great. Installing it in Sue’s car without LATCH actually took less time than it took with my truck, which is usually easier because of LATCH. The biggest complaint that I have is that it is very difficult to install the seat at the correct angle without lots of padding. The seat reclines, but not enough. I had to resort to using two rolled up towels to get the proper angle.

Getting the bulky seat into my truck proved even more exhausting and difficult. It barely fits (two inches to spare) and takes a lot of effort to tighten properly when padded so much to get the right angle. A guy at work has the same seat (Eddie Bauer version) and found that removing the base helped with the angle and cranking it down. I’ll have to give that a shot tonight.

On the plus side Emelia loves it. It is much bigger than her tiny carrier so she has room to move and sit comfortably. The shape is different too. Instead of having her legs out straight and feet hitting the seat back, her legs are now bent at the knee as if sitting on a chair, but well reclined. She slept like a log during a trip last night and seemed comfy enough on the ride to daycare today.

One last negative comment that seems pretty common is that the crotch belt is too short. I moved hers all the way to the front (something I didn’t expect to do for a 6 month old), which made for a little more room, but I can still see why there are complaints about it. I’m sure it’ll be tight come winter time when she has on more clothing. One last good thing is that the damn thing is easy to adjust. You can move the shoulder straps up and down with the twist and pull/push of some levers. Very nice feature for a seat that you might not want to reinstall often.

Time will tell which camp we’ll fall into: love or hate.