My son is huge. Physically, his so far past his age in development, motor skills, and overall physical achievements it sometimes a little gut wrenching. In some ways, this is nice. I almost never have to carry him anywhere, he helps himself to a good deal of food, he can climb to reach anything he wants. In other ways, it is very, very bad. He can climb to reach almost anything he wants and he outgrows his clothes every two months or so. Unfortunately (or fortunately) his mental abilities seem to have not kept pace with his physical development. While he may look like a three year old, he is very much a nineteen month old. He has no long term memory for what "makes ouchies," his vocabulary consists of "No!" "Mamamamama!" and "I need!" only deigning to use other words if he feels like being charming. Our wonderful child that preferred to be put to bed awake, now cannot be rocked to sleep. Having freed himself from the bondage of the crib, the hours of 9 P.M. to midnight now consist of returning him to bed over and over...and over and over and over. And of course, he has outgrown or outsmarted almost every childproofing measure we installed.
We have been coping with all of this with a measure of not-so-quiet desperation and extreme exhaustion, until last weekend. It has become rapidly apparent that he will outgrow his car seat in a matter of months. The next size up car seat is the booster with the back...and no harness! I find it very hard to believe that we are the only parents out there with a huge toddler and there is no way it is safe for him not to be in a harness. I'm having nightmares of him undoing his seat belt and climbing around the car. Nightmares of me having to stop every three minutes to put him back in his seat. Nightmares of being pulled over for my kid jumping on the back seat of the car. "Yes officer, I know my kid is unbuckled, why don't you ask him to sit down and stay buckled?"
We tried plopping him in every other brand of seat at several different stores in an effort to see if other brands ran a little bigger with no success. If "Go back to bed go back to bed go back to bed" takes three hours to be effective how can I hope that "Sit down and buckle up, sit down and buckle up, sitdownandbuckleup, SIT DOWN AND BUCKLE UP" is going to be any more successful?
Maybe I'll ask the paramedics for a child backboard to strap him to and toss in the trunk.
