It has happened...

Olivia is forward facing in her car seat. :(

I'm really proud that we made it two and a half years, but I'm sad that we can't go longer.

When I purchased the My Ride she was 5 months old.  I didn't know nearly as much as I know now.  I went off of Consumer Reports.  Based on the reviews, the two that I was going between was the My Ride 65 ( what we have) and the Britax.  All I knew is that it could rear face up to 40 pounds and that sounded like a far way off to me.

Sadly, there are height requirements too.  Each car seat is different.  For the My Ride, the child's head has to be one inch below the shell.  Our tall girl got there faster than we expected.  (Thankfully, though, I went with the My Ride as the Britax car seats have some of the lowest shells on the market.)

There are car seats that are taller and could have her going for longer.  In other countries they rear face until age 4--minimum!  But the one that would have worked for us was nearly $300 and not in the budget right now.

The other problem is that we are going to be adding a newborn car seat soon.  Once again, I had no idea that not every car seat works for every car.  We have an SUV, so you'd think there would be plenty of room.  But with Olivia's car seat rear facing, the passenger seat had to be up a good bit.  The same is true with our infant car seat.  Michael drives the car just as much, if not more than I do, so it wouldn't be safe to have the drivers seat up as far as it would need to be.  So, once again, that would mean a new slimmer car seat. :(

Olivia has only rode in the car forward facing a few times.  The first time she kept commenting on it, but since then she hasn't said much.  She never really gave us any trouble rear facing, though, so it wasn't a huge difference.  I know some kids throw fits or get sick.  Ours was just a smooth transition that makes mommy's heart a little sad (and worried!).