Day 226 - Learn to Install a Children's Car Seat

Date: August 20th, 2010

So we enter day two of "Kristen really should've planned ahead" mode.  Thankfully, Justin's family was there to rescue me.

Justin and I were on our way to spend the weekend with his family in Chicago so we drove over to Kalamazoo on the Friday before to socialize and get ourselves in the right place to catch the train we were all taking into the city.  As we pulled off the highway at 10ish at night, I realized that I hadn't done a new thing.  I'd spent the day packing and cleaning and hadn't thought for a second about the fact that all the officially awesome stuff didn't start until the next day.

We pulled up to Justin's older brother's house, which was gorgeous and I immediately forgot my concerns.  Justin's family is really an amazing bunch of people so as soon as we walked in the door I spent the better part of the next hour with hello's and conversations.  They're incredibly easy to get along with and to pass time with.  We all piled into cars to head over to Jeremy's new office and check it out before heading back around to call it a night.
 
By now it was 11:30 and I once again realized I hadn't done anything new.  As this realization struck me again and I leaned in to tell Justin about it, we saw his brother moving quickly toward the van that would take people to the train station in the morning.  He was rushing to install Christian's (Justin's nephew) car seat before people went to the hotel.  We walked over and Justin semi-frantically explained that I hadn't done anything new and that I didn't know jack about installing car seats.

So Jeremy took what would've been a ten second task and generously gave me a few minutes to explain how it worked.  He showed me the awesome secret ninja buckles hidden inside the seat that the car seat latches onto.  He showed me the proper seat securing technique and explained why it mattered.  And he showed me how to test to make sure the seat was in properly.

Ok.  Lesson learned.  I'm officially ready to have kids now!

Actually, I'll tell you what my little personal lesson for the day was, in all honesty.  It was that there is joy in surrounding yourself with generous people.  See, we were all dead tired.  Almost everyone had traveled a long distance that day to get to Kalamazoo and the only people who didn't travel were preparing to host a house full of family for the night.  Not one person rolled their eyes or seemed annoyed about Jeremy slowing down to show me that.  Jeremy himself didn't argue or hesitate to show me how it worked.  At the mere mention of my project, Justin's whole family immediately wanted to help.

I didn't show it at the time, because it caught me a little off guard, but I was incredibly touched.  What a silly thing it is to need to learn how to install a car seat or fail, but that didn't phase them at all.  Despite the tiny, almost afterthought that was my thing of the day, my lesson was bigger than usual.  It is joyful to be around kind people.  I would highly recommend it.