Another day, another milestone in my house! Saturday, after returning home from our new Sign & Sing class, I removed our trusty Graco SnugRide carseat bases from the minivan. I had been leaving the seats themselves in the car for the last week or so. It has just become too heavy and cumbersome to lug them in and out of the house with the babies in them. While the kids aren’t particularly close to the stated size limits (22lbs and/or 29in), it just felt like time to be done with them. Maybe if I had just one kid I’d hold onto it longer… but not with two.

[As an aside, I can't imagine purposefully getting one of the seats with even higher size limits... not only are the seats, themselves, even heavier, but lugging a 30-lb baby around in a carrier?! Good lord!]

This also, of course, means saying a fond farewell to our Double Snap N Go. Ah, the Snap N Go. My constant companion. You just can’t beat having a carseat stroller frame. It literally was used almost every day. It has gotten to the point, though, that I have sort of a love-hate relationship with it. Convenient and essential though it was, it also drives like a bus and can be kind of awkward and clunky.

Taking the place of the old equipment are two Britax Marathons (purchased on sale from Amazon.com last month, at a better price than Babies R Us, even with the twin discount), which are enormous but should last us a good 3+ years. For the stroller, we’ve been using our Peg-Pérego Aria Twin off and on all along, but now it’s the primary go-to set of wheels. The best part about it is that it’s quite lightweight. The downside, as is the case with many standard strollers, is that it can’t handle much more than flat, dry, unobstructed pavement. I’m not much of an outdoorsy-type, but I do like to take nice walks and could see the benefit of a more terrain-friendly stroller. So, I’m stalking Craigslist to see if I can find something (the Mountain Buggy Urban Double, if I’m lucky) for a more reasonable price than the $650+ for a new one.

Daniel & Rebecca are outgrowing (physically and developmentally) a bunch of things recently. The swing hasn’t been used in nearly two months, bouncy seats even longer. And today, we wave goodbye to their main mode of transport for the last eight months. In truth, we’ll use them once more when we fly to Florida in two weeks, but that’s the last of it. I have an email partially composed, ready to send to my MOT club listserv, to unload all of this baby gear on someone else. It has been good to us, and it’s all still in darn good condition, but I’m ready to see it go. There’s plenty of other stuff taking up space in our house right now.

If I sit and think about it, it’s a little bit bittersweet to think that my babies aren’t such little babies anymore. I think about how tiny they used to be in those carseats they’re now outgrowing. I think about how the Snap N Go was a lifesaver, that I wouldn’t have been able to leave the house without it in those early weeks and months. But then I remember what those first weeks and months were like. And I quickly snap out of it and remember how much happier I am now, with fun and nearly-mobile eight-month-olds, than in the hazy, hellish days of eight-week-olds. Yeah… see you later, newborn stuff!

Cross-posted at How Do You Do It?