Wednesday, September 9, 2009

Practice, Practice, Practice....

Monday I spent a significant amount of time totally consumed with dismantling, washing, wiping and reassembling the car seat. Why you ask? Because that's just one of the psycho things I do these days: take totally normal, functioning things and completely dismantle them because they just haven't been cleaned in a long time.

Right. Like the time I moved the washer and dryer out and was in the process of shop vac-ing and wiping up the lint... because normal people do that. When Todd asked, "What, exactly, are you doing?", my only response was, "Cleaning the lint...it was dirty?" He then proceeded to help extract me from behind the dryer - because I had wedged myself in there so far I was lucky we didn't have to call Medivac to cut me out.

I digress.....the car seat. So, in some pregnancy-induced panic attack I realized that if we were to arrive at the hospital, have the kid, and then then try to load him into the car seat to go home we would have no idea how to work the damn thing. Not to mention the car seat bases aren't even installed in either of the cars, so we couldn't leave anyway. Well, I wasn't about to look like a MORON trying to buckle the kid in to leave, so naturally the only thing to do was completely disassemble the seat (to inspect every strap, buckle and clasp for defects), remove all fabric coverings (to clean, sanitize, press, etc.), get a feel for what we were getting into and then put it all back together again.
Somewhere along the way I decided one of the crotch buckles on the 5-point harness thing was flipped the wrong way. You know, like when the seat belt buckle in the car gets twisted and the metal clasp is pointed the wrong way so you have to wear the seat belt with a twist in the lap belt part? That irritates me so badly that I wasn't even willing to let the poor little kid endure the mental anguish of a "flipped belt", so I pulled the straps out too.

A good 2 hours later, with the whole thing pulled apart on the floor and Todd practically begging me to come to bed, I finally gave in and called it a night. I layed there until I was sure Todd was asleep and when I was convinced he had dozed off, I got back up and headed BACK to the car seat. Not even sleep deprivation could keep me from it. I mean, what if we had the baby tonight? We would be totally ill prepared to take him home. Satisfied that I had conquered the car seat I called it a night. Total time spent "fixing" car seat: nearly 5 hours.
Then, yesterday after work, just to prove that I could work it I gathered two stuffed animals: one small one (to represent the newborn) and one slightly larger one (to represent a 2-3 month old) and put them in and out of the seat, adjusting the buckles appropriately and practicing loosening and tightening all the straps. I can adjust the crotch strap and cinch that baby up so fast the hospital staff is going to be amazed!!

And all of this "Because we don't want to look like idiots when we go to take him home." Right. Because there are a lot of things that look worse than some 9 month pregnant lady feverishly buckling and unbuckling a FRICKING STUFFED TOY from a car seat. I fear I have reached a new low.

However, I must say, when I showed Todd how adept I had become at moving the "baby" in and out of the seat and insisted he practice too, he did humor me by removing the "newborn" and replaced it with the "bigger baby." Obviously his learning curve peaks sharper than mine.

3 comments:

  1. Hey if you get bored you are more then welcome to come clean my kids car seats, cause ummm really who does that?! :) But what a lucky baby to have a mommy and daddy that will know how to buckle him in safely.

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  2. Totally cracking me up. Perhaps you just aren't going to go in to labor until every last square inch of YOUR ENTIRE GODDAMN RANCH is torn apart, cleaned, inspected, re-cleaned, then re-assembled?

    Feel free to come "nest" at my house any old time. ;-)

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  3. Remember the good ol' days when we didn't have all this 'safety' stuff?...My mom brought be home from the hospital in a hard-sided cooler (lid off of course)!

    Still loving reading your blog - thanks for the laughs!! - Megan G.

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