The car seat game.... what to buy new, what to hand down
My third child is outgrowing his seat and I need to figure out what to buy new, what to hand down. If you hate these kind of sagas - they always confuse me - please skip this post, but for the car seat gurus, I'd appreciate your expertise!
The seats in question are: Cosco Apex 65 (currently used as a booster) for my tall 7 year old DD1, Britax Marathon for my big 5 year old DD2, and Graco Safeseat for my 20 month old DS. That's the seat that has been outgrown. Everyone else is happy in their seats.
Should I buy DS a new convertible, probably a new Britax Marathon? Or should I hand down DD2's old Marathon (it's about 3 years old), hand down the Apex to DD2 and get DD1 a new booster? There are two reasons to do that: 1) DD2 is a big, solid girl and I wonder if she'll start to feel cramped in the Marathon, especially in the shoulders, or if she'll seem too tall in it, since it sits so high off the seat already. 2) I cannot fit all the kids in the second row in seats, and I'd like to be able to do that on occasion. I don't want to buy a whole set of narrow seats, but if there was a narrow booster seat that could fit in between the other two seats, I'd be interested.
I'm not too up on car seats, so please state the make and model for anything you recommend, so I can look it up.
Advice and commentary on living overseas
DD1 15, DD2 12, and DS 9