Winter is here, and if you have little ones that means trying to keep them warm while shuttling to and fro in the car. One of the tricky things is to get a good car seat fit with all of the "fluff" that winter brings; the "fluff" being anything that didn't come with the car seat that we use to make it cozier (coats,blanket type inserts, etc). While these things are really appealing, they can actually make the car seat not fit properly and consequently unsafe. There is a great blog post from The Car Seat Lady where she goes into a ton of detail about what can cause problems and how to fix them. You can read it here. The gist of it is that all those cozy things can bulk up your child, making them bigger than they actually are. So when you tighten down the straps you are tightening on coats, sleeping bag inserts, etc, and not on the actual child. But if you were to get in an accident those things are so easily compressible it is like they aren't even there, and then the care seat straps on your child are really loose, putting them at risk. It's worth reading the article--I learned quite a bit!
