Z weighs 21 pounds! Since his baby car seat is only good up to 22 lbs, today I hit Babies R Us, and, after reading a lot of reviews and recommendations, purchased him a Britax Roundabout convertible car seat. I was all set to get the Marathon, since it goes up to 65 lbs, but it turned out to be too big to fit in my car! Plus, Baby Bargains points out that the height limit on the Marathon is 48", which is likely to come up a lot sooner than 65 lbs.

Britax is the Cadillac of car seats, and the Roundabout sold at BrU for $199. I happened to have a coupon for 15% off any item, and then I applied for their credit card to get another 10% off, so in the end, it cost $163 with tax. I feel kind of smug about that. :)

So now I get to review all the stuff in my CPST manual about convertible car seats. Mainly, it's the same as for the baby seat, since I'll still have it rear-facing until Z hits the 33 lb limit, but there are some special tricks. One nice thing about the Roundabout is that you can use the top tether for the rear-facing installation--most seats can only use it for forward-facing. Only problem is, our cars are so old, we have no top tether anchors. So next on the to-do list is to call the Nissan dealership and see about getting them retro-fitted.