  As one might gleam from reading my notes on car seat research, we're in the market. Ellie's outgrowing her little infant carrier seat, and while I agree with most research that says not to turn them around until their height mandates it, I am ready to move her into a rear facing/front facing convertible seat.
These seats offer more support, and actually fit in smaller cars more correctly (counterintuitive, I know, because they're actually bigger). Car seats seem to evolve quickly these days since parents control such a huge amount of capitol, and safety sells. I'm not complaining, though. I skimped a little on safety regarding the size of my car for the sake of our sustainable values, so I feel like I'm making up for that just a bit when I look into the safest car seats. Aidan's RF/FF convertible that he is now outgrowing (you can tell b/c his shoulders are at the same height as the highest strap outlet) is already outdated two years after we bought it. So we're in a position to buy two new car seats at a whopping cost of $320. Two new trends have emerged in car seat safety that threaten to outdate any seat I buy. One is the protective wings concept, where the sides come further up to protect from debris from a crunched car hitting the baby's head.
This also gives the baby more of a ledge to lean his or her head against while sleeping. The other trend is making the part of the car seat that surrounds the head out of the plastic material long used for bike helmets. I guess you could call it a third trend, but it's just a fact that wasn't publicized enough until recently, but these days parents are told to turn the baby to front facing when their legs can no longer fit rear facing, or when they exceed 30 pounds. The idea behind that is that only 5% of all crashes are from the rear, so the vast majority of crashes produce forward momentum, which is best handled by the backbone, the strongest part of the body.
It used to be widely said, and still is by those who don't research, to turn your baby around at one year and 20 pounds. Turns out this is just the legal minimum, not the gold standard for safety. After all I looked into, the Brittax Roundabout appears to be the RF/FF convertible with the best mix of upmost safety and adequately small for my little VW back seat.
For Aidan, I will probably move him up to the Cosco Summit High Back Booster. One more link to share. If you, like me, are ready to drop too much cash on car seats, here's a good urlLink my simon-esque cost compare sight for kid stuff . 
