Wednesday, June 23, 2010

Double stroller hunt

I have a not so full sized SUV. I also have four kids and all seats are filled literally. Unless my husband is not with us every seat in thr back is filled with a car seat. I have been on the hunt for the perfect double stroller to fit in the back of my car and maybe leave a little room for a bag to be kept in there. My youngest two children need a stroller but they need seperate things. My youngest needs to be in something that will either hold her carrier, or recline her as she's still very little. My second youngest, needs something that he can sit up in but yet he may need to recline some if he falls asleep. Oh and this has to fit in the back of an suv. This suv doesn't have the
nice dip in the back area which leaves alot of extra room for a stroller and so on. This is so much smaller.

Not everyone who has four kids can run out and buy a full sized suv. I know we can't, we had just gotten our Saturn outlook just a few month after our third was born and of course a few months before we found out we would have number four. The reason we moved from our minivan to an suv, well we needed a newer car, my husband really wanted an suv, so we got an suv. It's a nice car, just doesn't fit us very well. But we are making it work for us. We took a trip this last weekend for a family reunion on my husbands side. For this trip we took all four
kids, each one in a car seat. Four smaller bags, one for each child. A bag for my husband and I, this was also a bigger bag. Food items for our cabin that I picked up and packed.My husbands guitar and amp, a play pen, the fisher price rocker that folds almost flat, and our quinny zapp stroller. I did use a cargo bag which really didn't prove to do much for us. On the way there i managed to fit everything in my car with the exception of the playpen stroller and thr big bag on top of the car. Somehow the packing on the way home was a bit harder despite having less food to bring back, not to mention one less kid.
I have the ability to pack rather well when it comes to traveling, the military wife in me I assume.
I have only a few ideas on what stroller will fit the description. Some of you may say the Phil and Ted double would work. It doesn't work for us. Yes it does fit in the back with a little room to spare for diaper bag. To fully recline my daughter I have to place my son on top. Which isn't an issue until she gets a little bigger. See most strollers don't account for bigger babies. My boys are quite the chunks but so far, my daughter is still quite little, despite the ladies hovering ( and touching her foot ugh!) and telling me oh she's so big. My daughter is tiny! At a mere 11 pounds at 11 weeks, we are on a roll still wearing the size we were meant! 0 to 3. My boys, all of them in 3 months clothes and quickly moved up to 6 to 9 months shortly after. The Phil and Ted stroller was great when my youngest son was finally sitting up. Because my second and third son were and are so close in weight, they evened each other out in the stroller. My youngest son and my daughter will never even out each other, which leaves me only to put my daughter on the bottom seat (toddler seat). There is no recline . Now don't get me wrong thr Phil and Ted sport double is a great stroller, but so is the bumbleride and it is so bulky that it won't fit in the back. There needs to be a double stroller that has all the features but still be able to fit in those SUVs. Would someone with just two kids want to leave the back row laying flat just so they could fit a comfortable stroller for their kids?

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