Let's stick with the stroller - car seats seem too complicated

As every parent with more than one child knows there comes a time when it is necessary to convert a car seat from it being used by a toddler with the car seat belt over it back to its original state with 5 point harness intact. My Britax car seat has been sitting in the corner of my hallway for the past couple of weeks and I have been trying to ignore its presence. I dread the exasperation and sweat and arguments that are going to come with re-converting this back so one of our baby girls can use it.

At the start of this week baby A and baby E were happily playing and so I rooted around in the utility room to find the straps, instructions and dvd to equip me in my quest. Being a mummy of 4 and having a basic understanding of car seats and baby equipment I thought I would have a go without looking at the instructions. That was abandoned after a couple of minutes. Not being able to find any instructions in English I popped the dvd into my machine. Now I remembered why I was dreading this task. The only instructions available on the dvd are how to convert it from the baby 9kg set up to 18kg and from 18kg to 36kg. What the manufacturer hasn't factored into these instructions is when you need to convert it back from usage by your 5 year old to your 1 year old again.

The only option I can imagine is to watch the first lot of instructions on rewind pausing to reconstruct the strap system.

My car seat is currently sitting in the corner of the kitchen now with one strap half connected. The dvd has been removed from the machine and replaced with Mary Poppins. I have also realised that it needs a thorough clean with a packet of baby wipes in order to remove the ingrained breadsticks and fruit winders from the shoulder straps and buckles. This job is going to take longer than I imagined.

Since I have twins and require 2 car seats I have decided that I may just order a second identical seat which will come with all the straps fitted to the correct requirements and then I can put them next to each other in the kitchen, arm myself with the Polish instructions and dvd and I am sure my original car seat will be back together in a matter of minutes!