Win it!

You can win a Britax Frontier 85! Just click that link, then follow the instructions near the end of the post for how to enter. It's easy. The Frontier 85 is a very cool big kid seat. I personally wouldn't recommend this for any kid under 4 years old, but Britax rates it for 2 and older. It doesn't rear-face, only forward, but it's got the tallest harness on the market. It's what they replaced the wildly popular (and too enormous to fit in my car) Britax Regent with, and I think it was a good move. There are 10 harness positions, which beats the crap out of the usual 5 or 6. Also quite notably, from what I hear, this seat actually makes a very decent booster when the harness is outgrown. Most 2-in-1 or 3-in-1 seats are crappy boosters (I'm looking at you, Graco Nautilus currently residing unused in my husband's truck).

I did enter to win this seat. If I won it (we'd know hell froze over because I never win anything!) I'd sell or give away the Nautilus, then use the Frontier for Erin in the truck. Then after Orren outgrew his Marathon and his Radian, he could use it. That won't be for years. He's not even 1 1/2 years old yet, and he still has plenty of room to rear-face. I think we will make it to his 3rd birthday before we have to turn him forward-facing. That's what we hope for anyhow, to make it at least 3 years rear-facing, longer if we can. Then he'd forward-face in his Radian and his Marathon until outgrown. After that's up, though, we'd move Orren to the Frontier 85 so he could stay harnessed until he's mature enough to sit still in a booster, and buy Erin another Monterey if she needed one by then anyhow. (She could be 11 years old by that time anyhow, so she may or may not still need a booster. It will depend if she can pass the 5-step test to be safe in just a seatbelt.)

So yeah, I kinda want this seat... It's one I've been thinking of getting anyhow. We weren't going to buy now or anything, but it was an eventual plan. It would be neat to win.

Oh, one more cool thing about the Frontier 85 is that it's good for NINE YEARS before it expires!! Holy cow!! That's the longest car seat life on the market. The Radian is second at 8 years, and most other seats are 6, but this one, you can get 9 good years of use out of. That is outstanding. I've been moving away from the Britax brand lately, but the Frontier 85 is one thing they have done so right, I've got to give them their due. It's a good seat. Again, though, if your kid could rear-face, don't be in a rush to turn them around. Rear-facing is as much as 500x safer than forward-facing (depending on the type of accident), so it's really not something you want to be hasty about. Again, though, I've got to hand it to Britax for not rating this seat for 1 year and 20 pounds like other 2 or 3-in-1 forward-facing only seats. They rated it for 2 years and 25 pounds, which is still awfully small to be forward-facing, but a marked improvement over the norm. I like that.