Wednesday, April 27, 2011: Lock and roll

The fire station visit was not a hit. Well, it was and it wasn't. The guy who helped us was really nice. But also really long-winded. The plan was that we'd have him do a car seat safety check and then Gavin would get a tour of the fire station, with some up close and personal fire truck action. Initially the guy told us that a car seat check takes 45 minutes, though we'd need a little longer for two car seats. Fine. But an hour and a half into the thing we only had one car seat done (and for those of you who are dying to know, Gavin is now forward facing in the van because he's gotten too big to sit rear facing in that particular car seat). The car seat in my car, a Britax Marathon with a purple cover (which they apparently don't make any more. I got a really good deal on it new since they were discontinuing the cover. So now I guess it's a collector's item and you are jealous. If you're a car seat collector, which you probably aren't. Because that'd be weird. No offense. Though I do wonder what happens to old car seats since they "expire" after a few years and how you're never supposed to use a used car seat unless you hate your baby, etc. I shudder at the thought of all of those car seats in landfills. Does any car seat manufacturer have a recycling program? It doesn't look like it), turned out to be installed correctly. And he informed us of this after it had been completely uninstalled. And then the station got called on a run and since they're short staffed (thanks, budget cuts and anti-tax morons) he had to go. So no tour for Gavin. And no help reinstalling the big purple seat in my car. However, I managed to reinstall it myself yesterday and what I learned at the session made it much, much easier to install than it was the first time. So there's that. I should say, though, that this all took place in the fire station, so Gavin was literally only a couple of feet away from three huge fire trucks and when he first walked in there his jaw dropped and he kept saying in a hushed reverent tone, "Wow. Oh, wow." It was worth it.

These past two days have provided valuable lessons about child locks on car doors. Yesterday I picked Gavin up from daycare because Stacy had a meeting after work. When I opened the car door Gavin climbed in and instead of climbing into his purple seat, which is located in the middle of the back bench seat, he climbed over his car seat and settled his butt into the seat furthest from me. At about this time John, a child from his daycare, and his dad were getting into their car, parked next to ours on the passenger side and John's dad was buckling him into his car seat. "See?" I said to Gavin, "John is sitting in his car seat." And as I said this I pointed toward John and glanced at him at the same time. When I looked back at Gavin I saw the back of his curly blond head and the car door next to him flying open. My first instinct was to grab Gavin, which I did, and he was fine. It was a very windy day, however, and my car door whipped open like a 300 lb. trucker was on the other side of it, not a two year old child, right into the door of the car parked next to us on our driver's side. It left quite a ding. I didn't know what to do. My first instinct was to drive away. But someone recently did this to my car, though worse (it looks like Freddy Kruger painted his fingernails with White Out and then slashed at the corner of my bumper) and it really sucks. So I waited for awhile to see if the owner of the car was coming out. A lot of people were picking up their kids from the daycare right then and there weren't a lot of cars around. But no one came and Gavin was getting cranky and so I left a note. I left my name and phone number and and just said I was sorry and wanted to pay for whatever it cost to repair it. That's after I Googled "How much does it cost to repair a ding in a car door" on my phone. The prices that came up were between $75 and $500. Before I put the note under the windshield wiper I touched the ding and it really wasn't as bad as it looked at first. In fact, after I touched it you could barely see it. But I still left the note. No one has called.

Needless to say, I switched the child safety locks on the inside of each door to ON as soon as we got home.

Cut to today, post-grocery shopping with Gavin. Gavin climbs on up into the car and onto his car seat. Wanting to avoid a repeat of yesterday's crawl over maneuver, I actually get in the backseat with him, as opposed to just leaning into the car with one foot on the ground and one knee on the seat as I usually do, so that I can get him settled and strapped into his seat. And it's raining. So I close the door. Once I get Gavin in I try to open the door. It will not open. I try again, though this time my hand pulling the handle coincides with the words "child safety locks" in my head followed by the words, "Oh, shit." What I say out loud: "Uh, oh." Gavin looks at me a little puzzled. "Sit," he says, motioning behind him toward the front seat (remember, he's rear facing in his seat). "Do you want me to sit up front?" I ask. "Yeah," he says, followed by, "Open." Meaning, of course, "Open the door." He then says, "Go," and mimes putting the key in the ignition. "I can't," I say. "I can't open the door." He responds, "Open," and gives me a look like, "Of course you can open the door." "I really can't open it," I say. But, of course, that's not an acceptable answer. Because we can't just live in my car parked in front of the dollar store. Eventually the meter is going to run out of money, for one thing. "Okay," I say, mostly to myself, "Mama D needs to think." I am not without options and several things occur to me. The first, roll down a window and open the door via the outside handle. Except I have power windows and the key is in my pocket, not the ignition, so though I think of this, I think of it more as a sad irony than a possibility. The second, knock on the window to alert a passerby and then ask them to open the door from the outside. Two people pass who are candidates for this venture. One is an African American woman in maybe her 30s who is on a cell phone but is throwing something away in the trash can next to the parking meter my car is at. The other is a lumbering white dude wearing chunky leather sandals despite the rain. I rule both out for reasons that have nothing to do with them. Mainly, embarrassment. No way am I going to ask a stranger to let me out of my car. Gavin and I aren't in imminent danger or anything and that's a last resort kind of thing. The third thing I think of is crawling over Gavin's car seat and into the front without opening the doors at all.I pretty much know immediately that this is what I am going to do. I am not entirely sure, however, how I am going to do it. See, I have a Subaru Legacy and it is a pretty tight squeeze from floor to ceiling. From the headrest of the seat in front of me to the ceiling is even tighter. Remember that Gavin's car seat is in the middle seat, which means that crawling between the two front seats is not possible without removing his car seat, something I am unwilling to do. I think if I can just get the seat in front of me reclined back that'll give me more room between the ceiling and the chair backs. But the space between the chairs and the car itself is very tight, too. So reaching now to try to grab the lever to recline the chair is a struggle. I have to cram my arm in there and then I can just reach it. I manage to get the chair reclined and it gives me some much needed head room, but now I have to maneuver around the chair back to get my legs out and over. Anyway, I take off my shoes and toss them in the front. I am worried I will kick Gavin in the face and also my shoes are wet and dirty from the rain. This action confuses Gavin, I think. But I don't have time to explain. "I'm going over," I say, and then very inelegantly scramble over top of him and awkwardly into the front seat. Or seats, I should say, since I am now in front, but am sprawled over both seats and the console, wriggling around and trying to unknot myself enough to get into the driver's seat. Which I do. And I save us. I think Gavin even says, "Yea" and claps his hands, but I might have just inserted that memory into the story for morale's sake.

Now, I have gained some weight over the past couple of years. But I am thankful that I am still of a size where my up and over trick was a possibility. The whole thing made me really want to go to the gym, actually. And now that my grades are in and summer has officially begun, I can do that. These past few weeks have been really stressful, as the end of the semester usually is. I think I'll go to the gym tomorrow, though it depends on whether Gavin goes to daycare or not. He's got a cough and a runny nose and while we're hoping he'll feel better by tomorrow, right now I just heard him cough from his crib as if on cue. Poor little dude. Being sick sucks. Vote no.