Around about the four to five month mark, Gavin was starting to outgrow his Maxicosi carrier cum car seat.  He was starting to look rather cramped inside it because his feet would stick out of the seat and his shoulders would be hunched forwards because the seat was not wide enough.  No longer able to fall asleep in the seat, car rides with Gavin were starting to get quite taxing since he would protest quite vocally about being left in the Maxicosi for too long.  He was also forming a disliked for the Maxicosi because he was starting to learn how to sit up and, like all children wanting to grow up too quickly, he wasn’t happy being in the semi-reclined position anymore.

Unfortunately for Gavin, we had to keep him in the Maxicosi a while longer because he was still unable to sit up unaided - one of the requirements of using the Recaro car seat.  When we finally introduced the Recaro car seat to him, he looked a little miserable in it at first.  Locked in by the booster, he looked quite pitious, like a prisoner in chains, but I knew he was okay in the seat because Gavin was never one to keep silent about his displeasure with anything.  The final approval came when he started falling asleep in the sleep during our car rides.

When he was still sitting in the Maxicosi, car rides became a practiced art because I had to make sure that I put him into the seat only when he wasn’t excessively tired and he wasn’t too hungry.  With the Recaro, I can pop him in at any time because all I would have to do is turn on his lullaby CD that we bought from Borders and he’ll promptly drift off to dreamland.

We were actually quite lucky to find the Recaro car seat.  We came across it while we were looking for baby monitors late in my pregnancy.  Bambino was having a sale and we got this seat for a steal.  After a couple of uses, we discovered why it was selling so cheaply.  The seat was from a very old batch and the sponge was disintegrating.  A quick call to the shop got us a replacement and a friendly invitation to call again if there were any other problems.

Aside from the fact that the hubby likes Recaro car seats, we liked it because the padding was a lot softer than most of the other car seats we’ve seen.  With Recaro’s reputation for making excellent racing car seats, I figure we can’t go too far wrong with their baby seats as far as safety is concerned.

Bambino can be located in SS2 above the jewellery shops (Poh Kong, I think - it is a corner lot).  They also have a branch in 1Utama in the old wing on level 2 just outside Jusco department store.

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