Did you know that car seats expire?

Well we didn't!

We thought we were all set with most of the things we needed for this baby, but the day before Eva was born, I took off the cover of our infant seat to wash it. When I had it upside down, I noticed this printed into the plastic:In case you can't see that, it says, in all caps: DO NOT USE THIS PRODUCT AFTER DECEMBER 31, 2006.

Which means we were okay using it for Carmen, Gabriel & Paloma.

But which meant we needed a new seat for Eva, and fast. I was bummed about this a little because I really liked this seat, we had 2 car seat bases for it and it fit/ matched the stroller I still keep in my van.

Plus, now there was no time to get a new one. I was extra hungry at 5 when I asked David (who was still at work) on the phone, "Can we go to Chili's tonight?"

That was code for I'm starving, but he didn't read my mind. By the time he got home, it was 6:30 so I knew most restaurants would have a wait. We went to the new Chili's by our house, anyway, although I was asking him on the way, Should we go look at infant seats at Target really quickly first? He said no, let's go eat and then we can go. But when we went into Chili's, there was a 20 minute wait, which was a dealbreaker for him.

But I had been craving the Caribbean Chicken Salad I'd had a week or two before and nothing else sounded good; besides, I couldn't think of another close restaurant where we would be able to eat something healthy, quickly.

Still we piled back into the minivan and ended up at the old Chili's the other way from our house (and just before we got into bad traffic on the freeway) where they only had a 10 minute wait (yes, it probably would've been faster to stay at the other Chili's).

Afterwards we were taking the kids to stay at Mom and Dad's house so we could go car-seat shopping (and to the hospital in the morning). We ended up skipping the car-seat shopping since the baby could use one of Paloma's seats until we had time to get one.

Meanwhile, Gabriel & Paloma made good use of the old seat: