Installing my first car seat for the baby

First off, this is my first personal entry into my blog other than what I had written in my “About” page.  Instead of mulling over a good introduction post, I decided to just jump right in with something recent, like 2 hrs ago recent….

Yes, we are having a baby!  It is due July 3rd, 2008, or as my wife Dawn says, “NOT SOON ENOUGH!!!!”.  Yes, she is very loud when she says it.  Of course, in order to bring the baby home from the hospital, using a car, you need a car seat installed properly.  We’ll, I did this around 6pm today.  The seat is a  Graco SafeSeat Infant Car Seat – Eclipse. 

The seat comes with a base, which I installed into my wife’s Honda 2006 4dr Civic EX
 

Both seat base and car are equipped for LATCH  ( Lower Anchors and Tethers for CHildren).  The Civic has 2 sets of the lower anchors for the back seat.

Well, I connected the car seat base in the center of the back using the inner anchors from each set.  We want the seat in the center of the back seat in case of a side collision.  Well, after doing a google search using Honda Civic LATCH seat I found http://www.car-seat.org with the following Q&A:

Q. Can a car seat be installed in the center position of a Honda civic with LATCH? ……
A. No – a center installation in a Honda Civic would need to be seatbelt. …

So… I’m going to uninstall the base with the LATCH lower anchors and will reinstall using the center seatbelt.  I will visit the Burlington Mall this Saturday btwn 10am and 1pm for a free car seat inspection.  I’ll add the results after then.