We had our carseat safety check with the California Highway Patrol today. I know what you’re thinking–haven’t they been driving around with the kids already? Yes, but this is the earliest open appointment that the CHP had for our seat inspection. In the meantime, we read the manual, got advice from a couple of people and put the seats in ourselves. We basically just jammed the carseat base as tightly as we could into each of the seats in the second row of our Odyssey that had the LATCH system and pulled the webbing tight. The carseat itself locks into the base easily after that.
We had two appointments today: 9am and 10am. When I called for this appointment, they said that we needed two of them since we had two carseats. I don’t know why. They’re both identical Graco Snugride carseats and they go into the car identically. When I talked to the CHP person today, he didn’t know why I had two appointments either.
He took a look over our carseat installation. He liked that the base was jammed in as hard as it was–while grabbing the base near the webbing, one should not be able to shift it by an inch in any direction. He checked that our carseat had not been recalled (it hadn’t). He basically gave a few pointers here and there: ideally the carseat would be in the middle instead of at the sides, except that we have twins and the LATCh system is only on the side seats anyway; the center piece to the five point harness should be at about armpit height on the baby; our seatbelts lock if we ever decide to use those to secure the seat rather than the LATCH system; plastic shelf liner would be a better material to protect the leather seats than the towels we used since it provides more friction. Essentially, though, he said that with most people he’s had to remove the carseat and put it back in, but that we had done it right. Thank goodness–we had been relying on these seats for the safety of our children.