I’m a bit neurotic about some things, carseat safety being a big one. Ingrid is still rear-facing, and will stay that way* as long as possible, which is hopefully to the limit of the seat, which is around 33lbs for rearfacing. Another element of carseat safety is that as little as possible gets between Ingrid and her carseat straps, so she generally never wears anything thicker than a thin fleece, and has been doing that so far this fall. Today, though, daycare asked that we bring in a warmer coat for her to go outside in, which meant I actually had to go BUY one.

Enter secondary neurosis: girl clothes suck. In general.  I lean towards basics, love brown and orange, and no words or characters. I like purple — the aforementioned fleece is purple — but pretty much despise pink. It’s in her wardrobe, but not as the primary color of anything, really, except for one bodysuit that I leave at daycare for backup. So, yeah, I’m neurotic about clothes. Shopping for a coat didn’t help. I checked Kohl’s, and… I just can’t do glitter liberally applied to faux fur trim. I just can’t. Not while I still get to choose, and Ingrid doesn’t have an opinion. (I fully recognize that Ingrid will be into deciding some of this for herself, soon, and I plan on letting her have a voice in that.) I did find, at the LLBean outlet, a bright orange parka (the Katahdin one) for half price. Score. Sold. 

I almost want her to wear it in the car, specifically to go visit my MIL, who will totally see it as us pushing her one more step toward a career in professional softball. Whatev.

*Although I’m already doing a pro/con list in my head about Texas — front face because it’s a better install with the travel seat and we’ll be getting there at 11pm? Or take the extra time in the car parking lot to get the RFng good and snug? And if we FF, will she become addicted to it? And this is after the internal debate of "maybe we should just take our regular carseat, is it more important to be safer every day in your hometown, or for one week in a strange place?" ARGH.