Please show some restraint

It was surprisingly easy, pumpkin, to buy the primary enclosure within which you will travel with us.

The thing about car seats for babies is that, unlike, ferinstance, jogger strollers, they all perform very similar functions, and comparisons between models become much, much easier. When faced with a wall of baby seats at our local Purveyor of Baby Goods, your mother and I found the pricepoint we liked, pointed at one and asked if it came in the right colour scheme to harmonise with the blönk.

Luckily, it did.

We bought it on the spot, and I, thinking that I would be easily able to figure out the instructions for fitting it, slung it into the back of the car.

This was, of course, not the case.

Your father, it must be stated here, pumpkin, is a very clever man. No end of interesting trivia resides in his head. Seeing Nicolas Cage and Cher together on a TV screen in a café, he can tell you without prompting (always without prompting), that the movie is called “Moonstruck”, that Cher won an Oscar for it, that Nicolas Cage is Francis Ford Coppola’s nephew, that his first film role was alongside Sean Penn in “Fast Times at Ridgemont High” and that he divorced Lisa Marie Presley when she made him sell his $US 1.2 million comic book collection.

Your father cannot, however, use tools very well.

In some divine mistake, it appears that the ‘knowing which end of a screwdriver is which’ gene bypassed your father, to be replaced by the ‘knowing the license plates (and what they mean) of each of the cars in Ferris Bueller’s Day Off’ gene. This being the case, punkin, your dad (who can’t even put a pair of wiper blades on a car), decided to take the easy way out.

The blönk has had some issues of late, including a rather alarming instance in which the petrol tank lid came off in your dad’s hand at a service station recently. Being that the blönk needed to go and get some work done anyway, your dad had the brainwave of asking the people at the dealership to fit the babyseat. *Fatherly advice, always get your car repaired at the dealership. This can help you Maintain a Paper Trail.

** apparently there's some confusion here about precisely what happened with the petrol tank. Let's clear it up. When I arrived at the petrol station to fill the blönk's considerable petrol tank, the door which covers the petrol tank cap on the blönk snapped off when I opened it. This was no more than a minor annoyance, and certainly in no way compromised the safety of your mother, the public at large or my good self. There, I hope that's clear now.**

They refused, on the grounds that they were not an ‘accredited restraint fitter’, and sent me up the road.

On following the convoluted directions of the dealership staff, I found myself outside ….., a workshop hidden within the bowels of Mentone that IS an ‘accredited restraint fitter’, and at the mercy of Paul. Paul told me there was nothing to worry about, and set to work on fitting your seat. (a Safe and Sound Premier in Grey Chevron, if you’re wondering).

Moments later your conveyance was ready. With the helpful addition of two op-shop towels, which Paul thoughtfully sold to me ‘at cost price’ ($1.87 each), your seat is firmly ensconced in the back seat of the blönk. At the conclusion of our commerce, Paul looked me in the eye, fervently wished me all the best for the future and shook my hand. What a lovely, lovely man. It is Paul we can thank, then, for your (colour coded) seat looking so sturdy and safe in the blönk.

Love you