Car seat troubles

On my list of honey-do's this weekend was "attempt to install the car seat" in Hubby's car. Sunday afternoon was even nice and cool here for August (75!), so out to the driveway we traipsed, large box in tow. Hubby takes the base and starts trying to put it in the car. I tackle the child carrier part and try to remember how to loosen the straps enough so that you could actually put a child in there. After about 4 minutes, Hubby says, "well that was easy." I look up in astonishment.

"Does it wiggle?" I ask.

"Well...." he tries to wiggle the part closest to the front of the car and it can swing at least 3 inches each way.

"Ok, so it's not supposed to wiggle, like at all."

"Oh."

So we both get back to work on our project. Soon, cussing ensues from both of us. The part I'm trying to do (loosen the straps that hold the child) I've done before on the duplicate car seat we were given by my parents out of state. They will soon be traveling here with their Suburban and all the big gifts we received at that baby shower in July. When I managed to loosen these straps before, it took me and a friend, three college degrees between us, 30 minutes, the owners manual, and lots of cussing. But that was 7 weeks ago and my brain has deleted that info at this point. My biggest problem is that I can't find the English manual.

After 30 minutes or less, we have made a tiny bit of progress. I finally find the manual attached to the bottom of the carseat. That will be handy later. Hubby found one of the Latch system hooks and has attached it to the base. We can't find the other one. At the point where we're both in the backseat searching, digging, and straining, Hubby says with great annoyance and frustration, "Don't we know anyone who has tried to do this before?!"

"Yes! Remember our cop friend offered to do this for us when the time came."

"Just because he's a cop doesn't mean he knows how to do this."

"When he was here last, he said he had taken a 40 hour course on how to install a variety of carseats into a variety of cars. He offered to install both the carseats for us."

"Really?!"

"You were standing 5 feet from us when we talked about it that night! And I sent you an email a week ago saying you should meet up with him at lunch downtown one day and let him install this thing."

"Really?! Then why are we trying to do this?"

"I thought we'd give it a shot." That's not a real answer and I know it. My big reason for the attempt is so we'll really appreciate the gift of having someone else do it for us and for us be extremely hesitant to ever move the thing again. Mostly, I'm astonished that Hubby with the perfect recall on all things verbal (which is SOOOOOooooo fun for me during arguments) has forgotten about this (to my mind) important conversation.

So we toss all the parts in the backseat, haul the box back to the garage, and go inside. Mental note to call our cop friend.

I'm sure that between now and when it is properly installed, some extremely helpfully annoying woman will completely freak out upon seeing that the carseat is sitting sideways and unattached on the backseat of his car and want to either leave a note or hang out waiting for the owner of the car just so she can tell my Hubby how unsafe it is. Like we don't know this. Now why does my devious little heart really want to put a life-like doll into the carseat with it sitting like that just to freak out passers-by? Then I'd want to set up a camera to watch the results. But even if I had a life-like doll, I couldn't get it in there because I never did manage to get the child-holding straps to loosen. A project for another day.

Short list of projects for another day before the big day:
Assemble baby crib
Assemble changing table (possibly with the wrong hardware)
Adjust straps on carseat so it can hold a child.
Assemble the high chair (this could wait a few months!)
Practice setting up the pack and play
Assemble the diaper champ