Possibly The Longest Photo Description EVER

The babies, although nearly 15 months old, remain rear-facing in the car. For two reasons... 1) Per reports it is safer for them to be rear-facing as long as possible (up to 30 lbs!) and 2) Two of the three have not yet reached that ever-magical 20 lb milestone. So even though we obtained our new Fancy-Dancy-Fits-Three-Across-My-Car convertible car seats, they have been drinking in a fabo view... of the back of their seats.

 Now as we have a Long-and-Possibly-Masochistic upcoming road trip (17 hrs of driving... I mean who does this with 16 month triplets:)? But the option is long airport waits and a 3 hour flight with the Now-Very-Wiggly-Somewhat-Toothsome Threesome, their car seats, strollers and other misc. gear and scores of sick people. Not fun either...), I have been secretly hoping that we would be able to turn them forward-facing before the middle of December. I'm all for "making things work", but leaning over the front passenger seat as well as the back of car seats in order to give sippy cups/bottles to the babies, as well as monitoring frequently since two of the three have developed a penchant for turning their bottles over and allowing milk to puddle wherever they are, gets old VERY QUICKLY.

*as an aside, when speaking to friends I have almost uniformly been told... "just get into the back seat next to them when they eat". Ummm... they ARE the backseat:).

The fuel pump on my car had to be replaced last week.  Not a happy day. And apparently to do so, it required dismantling the back seat of my compact SUV... you know, the one with three car seats snugly installed. Yep, that one.

So when I picked up my car, the car seats were thrown in the back of my car:(.

Now I must explain that the installation of my new Fancy-Dancy-Fits-Three-Across-My-Car convertible car seats was anything but routine. I had a certified car seat installer do the job. But the center seat wasn't working with our seat belt (the belt wasn't long enough). It was such a problem that he actually had to call the car seat manufacturer and speak with an engineer. The two of them were able to find a work-around, which, although it was deemed safe, never seemed ideal to me.

So here I had three car seats in the back of my car and not a single idea on how to install the center seat rear-facing (and no real inclination to return to the car seat installer immediately for help). So I suppose it is a good thing that Isaac has surpassed the ever-magical 20 lb mark (two months ago). We managed to snugly install all three car seats... two rear facing and one forward-facing.

This last weekend, Matt and I took the babies out to a park with a few ponds, peacocks and picnic tables. Much fun was had by all. Parker in particular was fascinated by the older kids riding around on bikes. The Somewhat-Toothsome Threesome were nearly taken out by a few VERY angry geese, but we whisked them off quickly (what would we have done with quints? Not enough arms!!!). It was Isaac's first forward-facing experience and he seemed to be down with it. On the way back, Isaac and Emery found they could play with each other across their seats.

My heart melted:)