Trapped

Baby M and I have been confined to our small, stuffy, non-air conditioned house the past few days because of the California wildfires. We are lucky that we're not in the path of the fire, but with all of the smoke and particulates in the air we can't go outside or open the windows so the 2 of us sit and bake in the house as my husband goes off to his nice air conditioned office each morning. I didn't realize how much I looked forward to our daily stroll around the neighborhood with the Zooper until now. Besides the novelty of getting out of the house the stroller also lulls baby M to sleep. My other sleep inducing trick, walking around with the baby in my Kangaroo Korner adjustable pouch, is also failing because it's just too hot to be wrapped in fleece. I put him in there and after 5 minutes he is a little sweaty ball of rage. So aside from being hot and uncomfortable we are both a bit sleep deprived and cranky.

Today I worked up my courage to take baby M to a nice air conditioned mall, or at least, I figured, drive him around in a nice air conditioned car. My husband and I have taken him out several times, but I haven't taken him out in the car on my own yet. So just after 10AM I strapped baby M into his Baby Trend infant seat and then went into the garage to pull the car into the driveway and put the dog out. When I got back inside a few minutes later the baby was screaming, which is not unusual, but he was also turning a frightening shade of blue. He's grown a few inches since birth and I think the straps were too tight. After unstrapping him, calming him down and apologizing profusely for being a bad mommy I pulled out the car seat instructions to figure out how to loosen the straps. Is it just me or are car seat manuals impossible to follow? I am college educated, even graduated cum laude in engineering. I have put together an entire apartment's worth of Ikea furniture using instructions written in Swedish hieroglyphics, but I failed miserably at adjusting the straps on my car seat. Somehow the straps on the underside of the seat lengthened but the straps in the front of the seat stayed exactly the same. So baby M and I both had a good cry and then went to stick our heads in the freezer. Maybe we will try again tomorrow.