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 theย 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.ย “I GET TO WEAR THE REGULAR SEATBELT, MOM!!!!!”ย 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.ย 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.ย 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 lastย Evenflo ProComfort Symphony DLX All-In-One Car Seatย ($249.99)!
All you have to do is…
1) Follow bothย Evenfloย andย Mommy Shorts on facebookย 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 rulesย here.
Winner will be selected randomly and announced on September 5th.
WINNER UPDATE:ย This week’s winner isย 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.
Already like evenflo and Mommyshorts on BF…who doesn’t!
My little one is still to young for car games but I always like the alphabet game finding letters for the alphabet on your drive ๐
Me & my 2 year old boy love singing our favorite songs & he names all the trucks & semis when they pass!!! & him and his 4 month old brother always see who can make the loudest noises!!! ๐
Our favorite car game is the Alphabet game!
My girls aren’t old enough to really understand/play car games, but growing up, I always like “20 Questions” or the one where each person has to come up with something within a theme(animal, place, name, etc.) that started with the next letter in the alphabet.
My all time Favorite would be the Quiet Game followed by Eye Spy!
We play a game like I spy. Everyone takes a turn spying something and whoever guess the right object has to pick another player to name 5 things that are the color of the object
I have 2 babies a 2yr and a 1 yr old my 2 yr old uses my phone and puts youtube and we sing Mickey mouse even the ghanam style
We play the color game and a lot of singing songs.
My son is too young for most games but he loves clapping along to music.
My Father Owns a Grocery Store!
I love playing the liscense plate game!
We love to sing songs, it’s my daughter’s favorite!
My son is only 7 months so I do love to play peek a boo with him whenever hubby drives and I’m in the back seat. Baby loves to get surprised!!
Growing up, my favorite game was the license plate game and I spy. Now my 8 month old likes me to sing the wheels on the bus over and over again!
Follow both! My favorite car game is let’s pretend Mommy is a broadway singer and you’re her adoring audience game, lol. Baby loves Shrek the Musical and Mommy love to play Fiona Win Win ๐
My daughter isn’t quite old enough for car games, but when I was a kid we had sing-a-longs in the car. The game part was that you had to use your turn to pick something good or risk groans from the rest of the family!
My son is just starting to play nursery games. Peek a boo is his current favorite. I love his laugh when he finds mommy.
20 questions has become a fast favorite for our kids! It becomes tricky when they change their answer mid guess ๐
As a kid we loved “I spy” my son is only 9 months and isn’t a big fan of car rides (why were looking to get this new car seat) so we haven’t been playing games yet, just trying to get through the car ride with sanity ๐
I spy or the quiet game will be my favorite when my babies are old enough. I have an 8 month old son and a baby girl who can be here any time (I have preemies)!
My son is 8 months old and my daughter will be here any time now (I have preemies) so we don’t get to play any games yet but when we do mommy always loved I spy and the quiet game;)
I loved playing the license plate game while traveling.
My baby is only 8 months and at stop lights I always make faces through her mirror and she giggle ๐
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Favorite game is how many dogs can you spot riding in the cars?
Since my son is only Gonna be ten months old we continuously play the Mickey Mouse hot dog song and we all sing it to him and he loves it he claps and claps and eventually falls asleep ๐
Growing up my favorite car game was I spy. My son is only 15 months old, so we don’t play games yet.
I Spy! I would love to win! My son has almost outgrown his infant seat and we’ll need to switch him very soon!
I Spy is a favorite in our car! If we win this carseat we may end up with a sleeping baby instead of playing games! Would definitely love to win!!
The quiet game!!!! When they get older it’ll be fun to play the license plate game!
We start looking at cars and I tell her what colors they are. She’s not quite old enough for games yet.
Spot the construction trucks… Or buses…. My two year old loves all cars! My baby girl just turned one and we need to get a larger car seat in the next couple months- fingers crossed!
I love to play ‘ABC’, going alphabetically, find a word on a sign that contains the letter and call it out. first person to finish wins! It gets pretty desperate around J, Q and Z.
Kevin an I play the license plate game all the time! It’s fun to see where everyone is from ๐
I Spy is a favorite of our 6 year olds. He also likes to make animal noises and we say that he’s missing, and whatever animal noise he is making is sitting in his seat. He thinks it’s hilarious.
My kids are very young. So we love to listen to nursery rhymes in the car!
My favorite car game is Eye spy
I used to play “ABC signs” with my dad and my sister growing up on long road trips.
growing up on long trips with my dad we always played fortunately/unfortunately. Kept us busy and thinking.
Punch buggy!
Punch buggy!
My older daughter likes to try and make her little sister laugh for most of our car rides… perfect for me, as I can sit back and listen.
Growing up we played the alphabet game. A few months ago all my siblings (adults now) were in the car together and of course we played it again, and were much better at it now!
We love to find a licence plate that has 000 and then try and build up to at least 020. Once it took us about 2 weeks, and we were stuck on 016 forEVER. We also love 20 questions and would you rather and I have a crap load of karaoke CDs that we always pack.
My five-year old and I like to play, “What color is the next car we pass going to be?” My favorite game to play with my littlest guy (8months), is the “do anything to keep him from crying, because the car” game. I usually lose at that one though. ๐
correction–**”because he HATES the car”
I love playing “I Spy” and the alphabet game with the street signs!
We are doing the “Alphabet” game where you have to list something that starts with the letter that you land on. So I do an “A” word, Daddy does a “B” word, Kid 1 does “C” and the baby gurgles. It’s awesome as a time killer, and hopefully an effective vocabulary builder.
I have 2 kids (1 and 3) so conversation games are the best. For example: One person declares a category such as Fruit and the other players must come up with 10 examples of that category. The person who came up with the category gets to determine whether the examples fit. It helps our oldest to develop his vocabulary!
Any game but I spy. My son’s answer seems to be a moving target.
My 5-year-old daughter’s favorite thing to do in the car is sing along to her favorite songs. Luckily, her taste in music is quite varied. Her favorite music includes not only the Frozen soundtrack and her Vacation Bible School CD, but also Roar and Firework by Katy Perry. My 2-month-old son is still too young to sing along with his sister, but I am looking forward to the day when he can! I just hope they both like the same music! An Evenflo car seat would be great for my son, since he already weighs 14 lbs and is 24 in long (he’s in the 90th percentile) he will grow out of the infant car seat he is currently using well before his first birthday! P.S. I like both Mommy Shorts and Evenflo on Facebook. ๐
My favorite game to play in the car was 21 questions. My LO isn’t old enough for games, yet. ๐
We haven’t played any games with my 3 year old yet, but her Dad and I played the license plate game and the alphabet list game when we were first dating and took road trips. We would pick a topic “movies” or “street names” and need to list them going through the entire alphabet.
My favorite car game is the license plate game where you find all the states or the alphabet game – can’t wait until my daughter is old enough Ito play ๐
I spy!!
My 10 month old LOVES it when I read outloud his favorite books while driving. I see him giggling and squirming around, so cute!
Singing if you’re happy and you know it is the current favorite
We mostly like to sing songs in the car. But my favorite game is the quiet game…. I must be really good at it because I always seem to win. :/
I spy and punch buggy!!
My LO is not old enough for car games yet but when I was a kid we played the alphabet game!
We love animal noises!!!
Our favorite car game is who can sleep the longest or hold potty time as long as the almost 2 year old is asleep! We drive from CT to and from the Outer Banks every summer. It’s our favorite trip, but 8-12 hours in a car is enough to make even the most patient persona bit cooky.
My 4-yr-old and I like to count trucks and buses. And sing along with “Frozen” (I mean, who does NOT do this??) With my older daughter, who is 13 now, we love to take the letters from license plates and come up with the best words we can for each letter.
With my toddler, we like to sing frozen obviously! We also play a form of “I spy” where she basically just asks “what’s that” to everything we pass on the side of the road! It’s a fun guessing game for me since 99% of the time I don’t know what she is talking about!
But when I was little, I loved playing the license plate game, or the alphabet game! My brothers and sisters and I would get really competitive so we would get really upset if we weren’t the first to win!
We love the ABC game. I love the commenters that said the quiet game. LOL! We also like I spy, but it always ends up spying somebody’s butt. Sheesh, kids!
My favorite is the quiet game. My daughter’s favorite is I Spy.
For the kids: I Spy. For the adults: Who Am I?
My favorite as a kid was finding the alphabet on billboards. Nerdy?
We Play a lot I spy with my little eye in the car
Lately my 4 year holds favorite thing to do in the car is to do math
Every time we get in the car she Mom whats _+_ (2+2). Its fun. I love math and I love that she is enjoying it.