We weighed him again.

Orren weighs 29 pounds. That is 4 full pounds more than the doctor's office got him at yesterday. Thak said it was impossible to keep him on the scale to get a good weight, so that's why it happened that way. I knew he was more than the 25 pounds they said he weighed. I pick him up dozens of times a day. I KNOW he's bigger than that. While Erin was taking her placement tests for school, we went to Target and weighed him on just a bathroom scale. Sure enough, 29 pounds.

This is good, because it means that we DON'T have to fatten him up at all, and that if they can get an accurate weight on him next appointment, they'll know that as well as we do. Being that Orren is 29 pounds, and 35 inches tall, he is in the 84th percentile for weight, and the 97th for height. Of course, percentiles ARE a crock of shit still, but these numbers still make a lot more sense to me than the old numbers did.

On the down side, that means we're now within 6 pounds of the rear-facing weight limit of our Britax seats (35 pounds rear-facing, 65 pounds forward-facing). We still have 16 pounds between here and there on the Radian (45 pounds rear-facing, 80 pounds forward-facing) so we're not going to turn him around full-time before the age of 3, when spinal development reaches a major milestone in maturity since the Radian should definitely get him that far.

We do have a tough decision to make, in the near future, though. We have to decide whether when he gains those 6 pounds (to give you some idea, he's been known to gain 3 in a good growth spurt) we'll turn him forward-facing in the truck, or if we just put away the Britax, and move the Radian back and forth so he can still rear-face in both vehicles. Buying another Radian isn't an option at this point. We have a lot more to do with $300 than adding a 7th carseat to our collection. There are pros and cons to both options. The pro of forward-facing his Britax is that we won't be moving seats back and forth, and can just get a good install once, and leave it. The con is that he'd be 5x safer if he remained rear-facing. He's not even 2 years old. His spine is so immature still. The other option is the exact opposite. The pro is that he would remain rear-facing as long as we want. The con is that the Radian is about the most difficult to install carseat on the market, and moving it from vehicle to vehicle time and time again, we'd risk getting a poor install one of those times, and that would compromise safety just as much as forward-facing would.

I just don't know what to do. Knowing what I know now, I DO NOT want to look in the backseat and see my 2-year-old looking back at me because he's forward-facing at that age. At the same time, though, I don't want to risk a poor install compromising his safety, and every time we install and uninstall the seat, we risk that, especially with a very difficult to install seat like the Radian (and especially with Thak probably getting his hands in it. I do not trust him to install the Radian correctly). I think I'm leaning toward forward-facing the Britax when he reaches 35 pounds (the weight limit for rear-facing in it) and just minimizing the trips he takes in it until he is 3. A good install every single time is job 1. Extended rear-facing is job 2. Any carseat tech on the planet will tell you that. I guess that's my answer, then.

I think we'll probably have to buy a scale so we can weigh Orren weekly or monthly just to make sure he's under 35 pounds. I've heard of a lot of extended rear-facing families keeping a scale by the door, and weighing the kids before they go out, when they get within 5 pounds the rear-facing limit of their seats, since different clothes, shoes, and stuff like that, can make a difference in the weight of the kid in the seat from day to day. You CAN'T, even by an ounce, exceed the weight limit, so when they reach it, you HAVE to either turn them or use a different seat. We need to buy a scale so we can stay on top of this thing.