As you may have heard, Karen and I are having a girl in November (hooray!). This has opened my eyes up to new things in the world of baby things. For example, you've gotta carry your baby places and there are a million ways to affix a baby to your torso. Most of them are like 80 bucks (crazy), but if you really want to go nuts, you can spend over $250 here in town on a long piece of fabric. Maybe we can just take a Meijer reusable bag and cut leg holes in it instead. Those are like, what, a buck? Or how about a backpack: I bet those are on sale for back to school season. If it works for Yoda it can work for Baby Bus

But no matter what, you can't skimp on car seats since you've gotta keep baby safe while driving. Ok, well get this. Car seats have an expiration date. That's right. My boss at work said she bought an expensive $300 car seat for her kid and that her daughter said that she wouldn't use it if she had another kid now (less than 3 years that) because it expires.

Are these car seats made out of banana peels or something?

Let me quote one site: "If the car seat of your dreams is on sale for $175 instead of the regular $200 make sure you check it. It isn’t unusual to find that even the latest and greatest car seat has been sitting on the shelves for 6 months before you bring it home. [...] That $25 off sale price may not be such a savings after all. [...] You wouldn’t let your children drink milk that was 2 weeks past its expiration date, and you probably at least glance at the date on a bottle of medicine before you give your child a dose. Shouldn’t you take the same care with your child’s car seat?"

Yeah, ok, I get that safety advancements have been made and that it's worth your while to maybe buy a recent seat, but I'm not going to buy a new car for baby too just because that's more than six years old. I think I can be satisfied that sufficient technology existed a few years ago to keep Baby Bus safe. I mean come on.