bye bye crybaby sally...

What do you drive when you have three kids?
The answer is turning out to be very complicated when you have a five seater car, five people in your family, and three very bulky carseats/booster seats. Figuring out the right seating plan is comparable to tackling a Rubik's cube in the dark. Well, sorta... At least when you consider the following:

1. Infant seat is safest in middle seat
2. Infant in infant seat is safest furthest away from three year old
3. Infant in infant seat is most likely to stay asleep when not sitting next to six year old
4. Three year old and six year old will fight loudly if seated next to each other.
5. Someday very soon (and even sooner if six year old continues to grow as fast as he has been lately) the six year old will outgrow the very, very narrow middle spot once used as an armrest.

The answer is that if you have five people in your family, you cannot drive the beloved Volvo wagon named Crybaby Sally. Waaah...

So we have been car shopping.
And when you arrive on a car lot lugging a ten hundred pound infant carrier and dragging a six year old boy behind you, salespeople tend to promptly steer you towards the minivans without even asking you what you're looking for.

And let me tell you, I DON'T WANT A MINIVAN!

I know they're easy. I was almost swayed by that little remote on the Mazda MPV that opens the doors automatically on both sides of the cars to let your kids spill in or out of the car on their own. And Mazda Frank, the Mazda salesguy, tried to get me to believe that if you have leather in your minivan, a cool stereo, and a moonroof, you're practically driving a sportscar.

I almost believed him because for once the kids did not fight in the backseat when I came back with the whole family for another test drive.

"I love that minivan," Samuel confided in me after the ride. "Not one sister can touch me. And I don't care that you won't buy the DVD player."

I still don't want the minivan. But my only other choice is an SUV and that seems wrong somehow, too, to buy a huge tanker of a vehicle that will cost the price of decent dinner out to fill up at the tank.

B and I tried to talk ourselves into thinking that if we got a minivan, we could make it cool. That rejecting the SUV would be cool. And our dear Scion-driving friends assured us it'd be cooler to drive the minivan.

So I drove by the dealership again to take another stealth look at the family van ("Do you think Frank is going to notice us if we keep driving by here?" Samuel asked as we drove by again and again.) And the van we were looking at was gone. Sold. To another family in the same position as us, but more confident with their choice. Maybe cool enough to not worry about losing their cool. A family at one with the fact that it's hard to be hip with three kids.

But I was very, very glad that family was not us.