If everyone else was forward facing... Nope, not jumping off any bridges, either!

A few friends commented on the picture of Baby Lulu and me in her 8 month post, and - since it is Car Seat Safety Week anyway - I thought I could do a little PSA here...

We practice extended rear facing in our cars; at 3 years old, I am still facing backwards, with no plans to change any time soon.

Mommy did not need much convincing beyond hearing the words "reduced potential for internal decapitation," but the current AAP recommendations are to rear face for as long as the limits of your car seat allow.  They go on to advise leaving children rear facing until *at least* 2 years old - revising their previous suggestion of 1 year and 20 pounds.

Rear facing is 5 times safer than forward facing.

On occasion, Mommy wishes I was forward facing - I mostly play nice with Baby Lulu, but there has been more than one pinching incident (I was just trying to wake her up!), and it would be way easier to keep an eye on me... but it is SAFER to rear face, so I will be facing backwards *forever.* Grammy Boo and Coach got me a new car seat with a 45 pound rear facing limit, so at the rate I'm growing I'll be headed off to prom in that thing!

For those who are interested, my main car seat is my brand new Diono Radian RXT - we LOVE it. Besides having the highest rear-facing weight limit available in the US, it has a narrow profile, which means that even after installing it next to Baby Lulu's seat, there is a room for a passenger in the back seat with us.  I like it because it's pretty comfy, and Mommy did not find it any more heinous than any other car seat to install.  Also, since it has a metal frame rather than the typical plastic one, it has a longer life before it expires than most car seats.

I moved into my Diono so that Baby Lulu could graduate from her infant bucket into my old Britax Roundabout.  The Roundabout model has since been discontinued, but they sell a Roundabout 55 model.  The rear facing limit for the Roundabout is 35 pounds, but ours might be expired before Baby Lulu hits that anyway; Mommy is thinking *maybe* by that time I'll be ready for a booster, and Lulu can then move into my Diono, but it's a long way off so we'll see...

Those are the car seats we use 99% of the time; when we travel in Daddy's car, I sit in a hand-me-down Evenflo Titan Elite, and Baby Lulu uses my old Britax Roundabout 55.  Both of those seats support rear-facing until 35 pounds, and the Titan will expire in a few years, so either we will begin exclusively traveling in Mommy's car, or we will need to evaluate the necessity of new seats...

If Mommy knew what she knows now when I was born, she would have skipped the bucket and gone straight to the Diono - the bucket is heavy to lug around, and you know we love our babywearing around here anyway.  OR, if we won the lottery, she'd move us straight from the bucket into Clek Foonfs. {All of the passion that Mommy used to have for things like pretty shoes and fancy department store makeup is now poured directly into baby gear; Christian Louboutins? An old dream. Talk to her these days about a custom Olives and Applesauce toddler carrier... or fantastic car seats with silly sounding names.}

Safe travels!

For more information about rear facing, check out Car-Safety.org, Child Passenger Safety, or Rear-Facing Car Seats... or, you know, you could just Google it.

Okay, so those are affiliate links up there - which means if 800,000 readers click on them and order things from Amazon, then I get a $20 Amazon gift card.  Trust me, I'm not earning mega-bucks here, but I want to be up front. Also, I'm not sponsored by any of the companies named... If anyone wants me to review a Clek Foonf, I'd be ALL over it, or if Diono sent me a seat for Daddy's car, I would not object - I don't see it happening any time soon, but a guy can dream, right?