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The Britax Boulevard Click and Safe car seat was designed to ensure that parents use the seat correctly. It is very important to make sure that the harness straps are used in the right way and are use in a correct way, and many parents either don’t know how to do it properly or are in too big of a hurry to pay attention to the harness straps.

Many parents will fit the harnesses over their children and either adjust them too tightly, which can be quite uncomfortable for kids, or they will leave them too loose, which allows kids to wriggle out of their harness too quickly. Either way, the car seat will not give your child maximum protection on impact.

When you use the Britax Boulevard Click and Safe system you just need to listen for 2 clicks when you put on the harness. Just pull it and when you hear the clicks you know that you have done the maximum possible for your child’s safety. The straps are tangle free and that means that the job of putting your child and harnessing her is as easy as possible.

The Britax Boulevard Click and Safe is ideal as a rear-facing seat for babies up to 35 pounds. As your child grows, the Boulevard can then be turned to become a forward facing car seat for kids up to 65 pounds. This means you can still use your car seat through several stages of your child’s growth.

The Boulevard CS comes with side impact protection in the form of wings that cushion your child and gives him head support when he is resting or during an accident that causes his head to move to the side. This protects your child from such an impact – a protection that you won’t get from most other car seats. The Boulevard CS comes with an adjustable 5 point harness and an adjustable head rest so that your child is comfortable at all stages.

The plush cover of the Britax Boulevard Click and Safe is very soft and padded to give your child maximum comfort. There are many colors and designs such as the Cowmooflage and Lauren so that each parent can get the car seat the suits their taste the most.

Britax have patented a safety system known as HUGS, which distributes the loads on the webbing and harnessing to reduce your child’s forward head movement in the event of an accident, which minimizes the incidence of injury and keeps your child safer. The HUGS system also minimizes the risk of the harness edge aggravating your child’s neck in case of an accident.

Britax is known for its exceptional safety features and comfort. When you use a Britax car seat, you know you are giving your child the best you can. Your child will be comfortable in the car and protected in case of an accident. The Britax Boulevard Click and Safe is one of the safest car seats around, so when you drive with your child you can have peace of mind knowing you are ensuring him or her the safest ride possible.

I was just looking over the list of this summers Best Sellers for Children and I’m almost a little surprised not to see the best selling video games listed on the same page.  I suppose that the New York Times is not ready to abandon it’s traditional turf yet – and thank you for that.

It’s a wonderful line up and it makes me think that the more things change, the more they stay the same.

At number one a book called Golidilicious – featuring a magical Unicorn that allows the little girl  (who is the main  character) to combat her magician Brother. Now, there’s a classic theme.

The number two book is really interesting. It’s called Gallop and it features a simple and low technology animation approach called Scanimation.  It works like this : a hidden tab in each page of the book slides an acetate layer printed with vertical black lines over an encoded, detailed image of a different animal. The interaction between the two layers.

The number three book on the New York Times Children’s Bestsellers list is called Tea Parties and while it’s difficult to describe I think this book will appeal every bit as much to Mom as it will for the little girls who are the apparent audience.

I’ll try and cover 4 and 5 tomorrow- gotta run!

Yesterday, in Mount Forest, Ontario, the Ontario Provincial Police discovered the remains of an eight year old girl who has been missing since April of this year.  Since two people have already been charged with her murder, discovering the body and reuniting this irrevocably damaged family is the best that the investigators hope to do.  As a mother, I’m torn by the thought of only finding some closure by having the body of my missing child returned for burial.

All over the world this same  scene is being played out because as inexplicable as it may seem, there are people out there who will readily murder children and there is nothing that we can really do about it.

I read an article recently about the benefits of making it mandatory to implant tracking chips under the skin of children and while – when one looks at a case like this one- there are obvious merits to the idea, there are some serious drawbacks as well…you know – like that big brother thing?

Why does the word “mandatory” need to creep into these ideas?  Maybe it is a good idea to have the option to implant a chip – as long as  your child – will later in life (and not too late) have the option to remove it.  I suppose when people think of it as optional then there will be a cost attached, which will naturally make it unlikely that all families who desire this option, will have access to it.  Still, in spite of sad days like this, I cannot support mandatory chip implants.

Have you every noticed how many people in the video stores – for example seem to have trouble selecting a movie without a cell phone glued to the side of their head and constant feedback from the lucky person on the other end of the phone?  Independence and self-reliance are two characteristics that very much seem to have gone the way of the dodo.

But they’re very valuable qualities to have and I’ve always believed that one way to help cultivate those characteristics in yourself and later in your kids is through the pursuit of individual hobbies.  Anything from model building to model trains to sewing, gardening or growing bonsai trees.  Every one of these past times – and a few hundred others ,  will help people learn to spend more time -or should I say, “more happy time” in their own company. It’s entirely possible for a family to have  fun together and still have their own interests.

In spite of being such a busy place this really can be a very lonely world and if your kids can grow up knowing that they don’t need to be surrounded by other people to keep them entertained and from whose company they can extract their own sense of self worth, then encouraging their interest in puzzles, crosswords or building back yard birdfeeders will be an excellent investment of every one’s time.

Walking through the neighborhood last weekend I stumbled across something I hadn’t seen in a long time, a girl who could not have been more than 5 was sitting at a chair and table at the sidewalk in front of her house with a  lemonade stand.

It wasn’t five cents anymore although I was willing to invest 50 just because she looked so excited to make a sale.   It was pink lemonade and a little bit too sweet, but I’m not writing to give a food review.  What really caught my attention was in this day and age when parents are completely freaked out about molesters and kidnappers, this little girl was sitting – apparently alone- in front of her house, engaging strangers in conversation.   It’s not something that you see very often these days.  It crossed my mind that her parents must be mad to let her do this and then I looked around.

Mom was outside, she was around the side of the house with an uninterrupted view although our junior entrepreneur couldn’t see her.  There was a teenage boy sitting on a chair on the other side of the house, watching.  A neighbor across the street was on her front porch, apparently doing nothing, but as I turned I could see that she was watching me like a hawk.  And an older woman working in her garden next door had a clear field of view.  And every one of them was keeping an eye on this little girl while she started to develop her own sense of independence and self reliance.

I never realized that I lived in such a great neighborhood.

Should children really be forced to wear bicycle helmets?

Ignore for just a minute that this isn’t a politically correct question and ask yourself if helmets are really necessary on kids or if – as yuppie parents- we have successfully leapt over the ledge of sensibility yet again.

I understand that there is always that heart wrenching chance that a child will hit their heads and be seriously injured or killed, but the odds are pretty slight.  But looking all around me a tthe places where you don’t even need a helmet to ride a motorcycle- there needs to be some sense of balance.

Personally Im in favour of it although I do think that it’s not entirely necessary- well- except for MY KID.  And I’ll bet you that’s how a lot of people look at it.  Do what you want with your child, but if its up to me to protect the safety and well being of the life entrusted to my cre- you’re darned right he’ll have a hemet strapped to his head.  I have  a problem with the legistation in Ontario that makes it illegal for a kid to be on a bike without one. What about skateboards?  ARe they next ?  Yup -

It’s important to care for our children and to raise them with some awareness of safety, but we don’t need to scare the life out of them do we?  can’t they get just a little freedom?

……but on the plus side of politically correct – my son will probably never smoke. that can only be good.