Giveaway: Evenflo ProComfort Symphony DLX car seat
Well, it’s been fun, summer house. Yesterday, we packed up our sandals and our sunscreen and our carnival fish and drove back to our apartment in Manhattan.
Mike at the wheel and me in the passenger seat once again. I was just getting used to being the driver!
Camp drop-offs, playdate pick-ups, grocery store visits, all added up to a lot of time shuttling my kids around town. For most people, I’m sure this is no big thing. For a Manhattanite who hasn’t driven a car regularly since I was a senior in high school, it was quite a novelty.
I’m gonna miss driving.
I’ll miss the conversations I would have with Mazzy to and from camp. I’ll miss our spontaneous trips to Target, stopping for soft serve on the way. I’ll miss the late nights driving home, the two of them passed out peacefully in their car seats, way past bedtime.
On particularly late nights, I would often drive around for a few extra minutes to make sure both girls were sound asleep so I could transfer them hassle-free into bed when we got home. So much easier that way. And if their teeth rot from lack of brushing, they’ll get a new set soon, right? Fortunately, Mazzy never called me out for passing the turn to our house. Although, one time she did notice we passed the diner twice.
MAZZY: Hey! Why are we passing the diner again, Mom???
ME: That’s a different diner.
Total lie.
Harlow always fell asleep easily since she’s been riding in the lap of luxury, aka her new Symphony DLX car seat, part of Evenflo’s ProComfort Series. Its innovative gel matrix technology reduces pressure point build-up which alleviates discomfort (short term and long term). The added comfort creates a safer, more peaceful ride, since so many accidents occur due to a parent/driver tending to an uncomfortable child in the backseat.
The Symphony also makes your baby look like she is riding in first class.
The ride home was without incident which is lovely for the drive but boring for blog fodder. I blame Evenflo.
Especially since riding shot gun on a family road trip has the potential to be one of the most eventful jobs imaginable. Over the past four and a half years, I can’t tell you how many times I have unbuckled my seatbelt, slipped off my shoes and climbed into the backseat to tend to my children. Risking life and limb to get them a snack, locate a dropped pacifier or search the packed bags in the back for a forgotten blankie.
Every time, I imagine the police report if there is an accident…
“Father and children unharmed. Mother’s back lodged into the roof of the car with her shoes sticking out of her ears, a bag of goldfish crackers dangling from her mouth and a severed left arm just inches away from a dropped miniature Frozen figurine on the floor of the backseat.”
Is it just me or is the “ding ding ding” of an unbuckled seatbelt one of the most annoying sounds on earth? As if, in addition to the agony of listening to your crying child, you need to be reminded your life is now at stake!
I won’t pretend Mazzy and Harlow didn’t request anything on our drive back to NYC. They still asked for snacks and Harlow dropped her pacifier once, but nothing required me to move to the back. They seemed pretty content in their car seats (they even have cupholders!), plus they had each other for entertainment.
Mazzy tried to make Harlow laugh and Harlow made weird sounds to get Mazzy to copy her while Mike and I exchanged “don’t jinx this!” side glances since they seemed to be doing all the work for us. We listened to music, we played “I Spy” and I dreamed of future road trips when games like Geography and Ghost become viable options. Then they both passed out.
(We’ve always had a “no screen time in the car” policy so our kids would use that time to relax and take a nap. Mazzy and Harlow don’t even know watching an iPad in the car is an option.)
It helped that Mazzy was riding in a new seat too, since Evenflo was kind enough to send us their ProComfort Amp LX High Back booster. “I GET TO WEAR THE REGULAR SEATBELT, MOM!!!!!” You would have thought she was sixteen and we handed her the keys to a brand new car.
God help us, I hope that day takes its time getting here. Her first day of kindergarten is tomorrow!
Thankfully, I am taking her to school on a public bus. I think accident rates are probably pretty high for moms who can’t stop crying too.
As for Harlow, she’s trading grass for concrete but I bet she’ll be happy as long as she’s got somewhere to run and lots of interesting things to look at. Our view of the creek behind the summer house is pretty awesome, but so is our view of the city.
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THIS WEEK’S GIVEAWAY:
Today, I’m excited to give away one last Evenflo ProComfort Symphony DLX All-In-One Car Seat ($249.99)!
All you have to do is…
1) Follow both Evenflo and Mommy Shorts on facebook and then leave a comment below answering the following question:
What is your favorite car game?
2) Please like and/or share this post if you enter. It’s not required, but it would be nice!
That’s it! You can find the official rules here.
Winner will be selected randomly and announced on September 5th.
WINNER UPDATE: This week’s winner is Michelle Canga who’s three-year-old loves to play “find the water towers”. Congratulations! He will now be looking for water towers from the comfort of his Evenflo Symphony DLX!
Last week’s winner was Julie Hill and the week before was Sabrina, who talked about her 16 hour nightmare of a road trip with her 13-year-old and 10-month-old.
That’s the last of my Evenflo car seat giveaways. Please contact ilana@mommyshorts.com to claim your prizes!
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This post was sponsored by Evenflo but all thoughts and opinions are my own.
So far the only game we have attempted to play with our 3 yeast old is “The Quiet Game” out of necessity. Hahaha. It hasn’t worked. When I was a kid, my brother and I liked playing “I Spy”. I am sure that will be a favorite with my kids too when they get a little older.
Fan of Evenflo and Mommy Shorts on facebook.
We used to let our kid play on my tablet in the car until we found out that he gets motion sick when he looks at the tablet. (The Nexus 7 holds up pretty well to toddler vomit.) Since he was a tiny baby I’ve had the soundtrack to “Dr. Horrible’s Singalong Blog” playing in my car, and one day when Evan was barely 2 he begged for “hair” in the car. I tried everything and finally he said “wanna say, love your hair.” which is a line from “My freeze ray” – the opening song on the soundtrack.
Now we sing along LOUDLY on every drive (and he requests songs from the soundtrack before bed.) (He’s also going as Dr. Horrible for Halloween.)
(Disclaimer: He sings “BALLS” more loudly than anything else, so some parents may not want to replicate this game…)
Our favorite car game is slug bug… We play with points instead of hitting. “Old fashioned” bugs are 2 points, and a convertible gets you two points too. Keeps my 7 year old happy for most of the trip!
Name that roadkill!
Our little one is only 7 months old….but with my older children, we played I Spy or searched for license plates from other states. Now, as a child…my mom’s favorite game was B GOTCHA Last”….. my sister and I fought all the time and would keep saying that so and so hit me….mom would reach back and pop us and say….”new game….I Gotcha Last”…she had the longest arms! Ha ha
Our favorite car game is watching mickey for my lil 6 month old who’s quickly growing out of his infant seat!
My LO is only 6 months old so our car game is “be quite so we don’t wake the baby!” When my siblings and I were younger we would play “I’m going camping…” you go in alphabetical order and pick an item you would take camping. The tricky part? Remembering all the other items that came before it! On occasion we do still play, I usually list off liquor when it comes to my turn!!
We like the ABC game with signs and billboards!
We like to sing in the car and look for unusual/interesting sites!
On long car rides I usually get the pleasure of sitting between the 2 car seats. My kids love singing and reading books! They also enjoy pulling mommy’s hair!
I spy, playing with a magnetic train or construction book, singing songs and reading plain old books 🙂
I like both pages! Our favorite car games include looking for trucks and I Spy!
We love playing the license plate game!
20 questions! My daughter is three and loves this car game!! It’s somewhat education depending on the item chosen to have her guess!:)
My favorite car game is where my three year old and I play the quiet game. 🙂
My favorite car game is I Spy.
The license plate game. A simple classic.
We play “would you rather”. Ex would you rather be a polar bear or a brown bear. Why? The we talk about where the animal lives eats looks like.
The only car game we play is I Spy, but I can’t say that’s my favorite because I don’t like it that much. So, I’m gonna call singing along to our CDs a “game”, because Bert and I do a mean duet of Let It Go.
Favorite car game: everybody take a nap!
Favorite car game, eh!? My son seems to like to scream, “MOMMY!” or “DADDY!” in which we have to respond with, “BRAEDAN!!” It’s cute the first couple times but it gets tiresome after 10 minutes 😉
My little boy is only 6 months old, so we don’t play many games. However, he loves to laugh hysterically at mommy while I “sing” in the car!
There are two games we enjoy playing. While passing other cars, we like to play “Sweet and Sour,” where you try to see if you can get someone to smile and wave back at you. Whoever gets the most positive responses wins. The second one is less of a game per say but we like to make up stories about the people we pass on the road. It’s interesting what their little imaginative minds think up. 🙂
Our favorite way to pass time in the car is either reading stories OR throwback 1980’s kids songs…aka Raffi 🙂
my 7 month old loves to laugh with her older brother and sister about any and everything. Her favorite car game would have to be peek a boo at the moment
My 3 yr old love to play find the water towers.
The alphabet game!
My baby Kate is 9 months and she loves and her favorite car game is five litle monkeys jumping on the bed she loves to dance and sing to the song when she gets tired of the long drives we yust hit play and she gets happy I love her.
Favorite game for my daughter is see how much she can make her 1 year old brother screech with delight of peek a boo. Yesterday is was reading him a story with different voices.
favorite car game for the 7 y/o is I spy and the 2 y/o’s similar version is called “mommy wook!” where she points to random things out of the window and I try to figure out what she’s referring to while keeping us safe on the road lol
I have a ten month old daughter who loves to read books and sing songs in the car. Her favorite games to play in the Car are peek a boo and silly sound games! She gets bigger every day and would love this new car seat!
Dance party. My boys have moves even in a 5 point harness. The giggles & squeals are what I like most.
As a kid my favorite game was pulling on my parents seat belts, which now that I am a mom I don’t know how I wasn’t thrown out of the car for such shenanigans. Now with a three year old who despises being in a car and a baby due any day now I really try to play the quiet game but we usually end up making up lame knock knock jokes to make her laugh or we play ‘what color is the car in front of us.’ riveting I know!
ABC game 🙂
Mad Libs! I know this is dating me, but my family always loved playing this on road trips to Colorado to visit my uncle.
We like to play I spy with my little eye. But my three year old just says no until he wants to say yes. And my five year old likes to say things like, “I spy something with my little eye that is stinky and wearing a blue shirt.” – which was my husband. Never a dull moment in our car.
We play the alphabet game and come up with animals with each letter of the alphabet. My 2yr old keep us laughing as her favorite response for every letter is alligator. B is for alligator. C is for alligator. 😉
I’ve inherited a “game” from my own father. On road trips, he was adamant that we look out the window and enjoy the scenery. So to check if we were looking out the window, he’d always holler out about animals he spotted. So if there were a herd of cows for example, he’d say something like “wow, that’s a lot of geese!” He’d intentionally say the wrong animal. I think he got a kick out of hearing us say: “No dad; those are cows, not geese!”
We play I Spy! It’s so much fun with my little girl!
We play rock paper scissors, Rats (a number game), and sticks (a finger counting game).
we like to listen to books on cd as well 🙂
My favorite game is to sneak in a nap when the toddler naps… does that count?? But her favorite would be singing “If your happy and you know it” or shouting what color the street lights are.
We play I SPY IN the car
ABC game! Always a classic
I have ALMOST ONE YEAR OLD twins! So games are kind of limited. But my most favorite thing to do in the car is sing with them. Seeing how there responses have changed over time. It used to stop them from crying (sometimes) but now they clap and stomp and “sing” along too!
my little one is to small for car games however my favorite game is to leave in the wee hours of the night to make the she sleeps the WHOLE drive. 🙂 we travel A lot.
The classic “I Spy” is our favorite car game 🙂
Our favorite car game is i spy or my
Husband and i take turns singing parts of a song. Ex i start with okd macdonald and then he will do the second verse or do animal noises. Our son thinks this is funny.
My family did a LOT of car travel when I was younger. We once drove from California to Vermont. We didn’t have iPad’s back then so my dad would rig a little 13 inch TV to a VCR that he strapped to the top of a cooler! 3 kids in the back of a minivan trying to watch a Disney movie on a tiny TV…it worked though! If we had to play a game we would play “I spy” or the alphabet game.
We love to play “Who Am I?” and the Quiet Game, which of course always results in giggles.
We play spot the construction truck!
My favorite car game is I spy. I love road trips
We play keep the baby happy. Lol. Hes only 6 months old.
My little one is too young to play games yet, but growing up my favorites were the alphabet game and finding tags from all the different states.
My son’s favorite car game is seeing how many trains he can find on our trip. He loves seeing the trains out the window and saying “Choo-Choo”. He also loves to tell Daddy “Go” when we are stopped or slowing down.
I spy is our favorite car game
My son loveso to look for tractors and semis as we drive around. I would have to say this little game is my favorite. He gets so excited when he finds one.
Our favorite thing to do on drives is to search for the hills and bumps and pretend we are on a roller coaster ride. Our 21 month old loves it and we are hoping it will get her ready for a Trip to Disney.
Our favorite is I spy but the quiet game is a close second 🙂
We play “My Horses”: Whenever someone sees a horse, the first person to announce “my horses!” and the number of horses they see gets those horses. If they miscount, others can claim the extras. Anytime someone sees a graveyard or cemetery, the first person to announce, “all your horses are dead!” gets everyone else’s horses. Maybe not so great for little kids (sharing is rough) but my husband and I have fun with it. He doesn’t usually claim horses, he just waits for cemeteries and steals my horses.
I spy is a staple for us, but simon says is a good one too.
Our favorite car game is “I Spy with My Little Eye” which we spruce up with variations of that phrase. IE: I spy with my mommy’s eye (and I’ll point out a safety violation ‘cuz I’m a nerd!); my 7 year old son will say “I Spy with my Monster eyes” and then something horrible like “a child I want to eat!” (and he’ll nibble the 2 year old’s toes). And my 5 year old daughter will say “I spy with my pinkalicious eyes” something totally girly. It’s been fun to witness the development in their personalities and their creativity with this game.
license plate game!
My 10 month old daughter just loves to dance in the car if she isn’t sleeping 🙂
My little one is too young for games, so I like to sing ‘The Wheels on the Bus,’ ‘Down by the Bay,’ and ‘Old McDonald.’ As a kid I liked the license plate game!
The license plate game!
We play the color game as someone else already said, we also love to sing to all our favorite disney songs and sometimes the itsy bitsy spider and wheels on the bus! 🙂
We love the ABC game. Where you race to find every letter of the alphabet. Q is unfortunately not quite common in license plates.
I spy is a classic. And mommy loves quiet contests 🙂
My little guy isn’t old enough yet but I remember loving to play I spy and the license plate game.
My 14 month old little one loves to dance in the car!
My kids love the ABC sign game, trying up find each letter in order. Now that they are older we make them race each other! We also play the license plate game & see how any from each state we can find.
We play “I’m thinking of someone we know”. We take turns giving clues about friends/family/cartoon characters and then the others try to guess.
I spy! It forces the kids to look out the window instead of their electronics! I would love to win this with baby #3 coming!
I loved playing Slug Bug ( we called it this, but never hit each other) when I was little! Our kids are still too young to play, but we will definitely teach them once they’re old enough!
The Quiet Game 😉
When we were little we played the license plate game,my kids are still to little to play games but can’t wait to play car games with them!
We like to play the flag game, where we count American flags. Traveling over the Memorial Day and Fourth of July weekends makes this game pretty exciting!
Not sure if it’s truly a ‘car’ game but naming the state capitals as well as the license place game.
Punch buggy!!!
I spy!
I like both on Facebook!!
Our family’s favorite car game is I spy! Such a classic and fun for the whole family 🙂
Thanks for the giveaway, would be amazing to own one!
The license plate game or the alphabet road sign games are fan favorites with this clan.
We play I Spy but not very well with our 5 year old, she tires of it quickly or wants to be the only one that spys anything. The plus side is she normally cracks herself up!
My daughter loves I Spy. I love “let’s see how fast you can go to sleep” 🙂
Our littles are both a little too young for games but we do play “where’s you … ” , where’s your nose? Where’s your ears? Ect… She loves it (:
My son likes to spot certain color cars. Like how many green cars can you spot. He’s too little to play anything else.
My 8 month old loves listening to music and I think he would enjoy the evenflow car seat too because of the heat and cooling technology.
We play I Spy or count how many “add color of choice” cars are on the road. We need a new car seat for our 10 month old so this would be perfect!
I have a three year old we play what color is that
My kiddo is too young for car games but I have always enjoyed “Car Encore” which is a game that a friend and I made up. It’s based on the unpopular board game “Encore” and involves singing snippets of songs back and forth. My husband hates it.
The license plate word game. You take the letters on the plate and have to come up with a word that the letters in order. You go back and forth until one person can’t answer
My 2-year-old yells “TRUCK” every time he sees one while in the car, so we do too. Even when he is not in the car (like date night). Which is either really funny, or really sad.
We loved the alphabet game. But one time we were driving to florida and noticed so many waffle houses so we decided to count them the rest of the trip. I think we counted 80 something of them round trip and yes we took a different route home so they didn’t get counted twice.
We sing an alphabet song for different topics….. Food, animals, names, etc.
I grew up in the Midwest, where farmland is the norm. We play The Cow Game! Once you pass a pasture on your side of the car, you must start counting up the number of cows that you see out loud before the person on the opposite side of the car starts counting them! The person with the most number of cows by the time you reach your destination wins!
Our favorite car game involves the license plate of the car in front of us. When they were young, color, state, letters, numbers. As they got older it was words beginning with a letter, biggest number, add numbers…and now it is find words that contain the letters in the order they appear, and is that number prime! (Ok, we are geeks.)
My favorite game to play on roadtrips is the state game! Trying to find all the dif state license plates. I am also a fan of trying to get cemi trucks to honk their horns! Ok maybe that’s not safe, but very fun lol also I liked and shared this article on Facebook!
We love I spy
I can’t wait until my youngest one can play car games! With my oldest two we play the ABC game and of course I spy!
My two year olds favorite game was KICK MY SISTER IN THE FACE since we were three car seats across in a TINY car and she was forward facing and he was rear facing in the middle but HAZAA we got a Honda pilot this weekend so now he Rear Faces outboard and can’t play that game ANYMORE! The 4 year old loves I SPY, which we played a lot of on our recent 6 hour road trip.