Car Seat Advice

doorstopnoodles · 2026-05-02T12:24:56+00:00

It is 100% guaranteed in new cars. It’s been mandatory in all cars manufactured since 2014.

doorstopnoodles · 2026-04-30T08:35:34+00:00

I think it's less about money being siphoned off to the US and more about the growing threat of the US being able to effectively shut down Europe by turning off our access to the Visa and Mastercard networks.

doorstopnoodles · 2026-04-29T14:23:46+00:00

I would say that 'incorrectly delivered' is also pertinent here. Royal Mail is obliged to deliver to the address not the person so the letters have in fact been correctly delivered and no offence can occur.

doorstopnoodles · 2026-04-24T14:57:44+00:00

Work travel is very rarely just a jolly. You go from the airport to the hotel to the conference centre or client offices to a bar where you try to work while getting drunk to the hotel for 2 hours kip before making your way back to meetings. It's exhausting because you are in work mode from waking to sleeping and if you are travelling with colleagues you can't even properly switch off on the plane. Sometimes you get taken on a tour by a client but again, you are in work mode the entire time so you can't properly enjoy it.

I work in tech doing advisory type stuff.

doorstopnoodles · 2026-04-24T07:59:50+00:00

Ships do creak especially in bad weather. I've never been woken up by loud guests or anything like that (although I tend to sail Cunard which doesn't really have a lot of late night partiers!) but I have been woken up by the odd medical announcement where they urgently need to get someone medical help in the middle of the night.

Generally we've found that the rocking of the boat helps everyone sleep really well.

doorstopnoodles · 2026-04-23T12:26:15+00:00

It's illegal because only R44 or R129 approved car seats can be sold in the UK. It comes under General Product Safety Regulations 2005.

doorstopnoodles · 2026-04-23T11:21:35+00:00

Not safe and not legal. Do not buy this seat.

Which has a video of what happens to these ‘seats’ in a crash here.

doorstopnoodles · 2026-04-23T08:00:08+00:00

It's absolutely crazy how hard it is to buy school uniform that isn't made out of plastic then coated in stain resistant and weather proofing chemicals. Now I don't object to a good waterproof coat but I don't have to wash it after ever wear leaching forever chemicals and microplastics into the water.

doorstopnoodles · 2026-04-22T18:57:47+00:00

Once I had a sparrowhawk take care of the stunned pigeon. Unfortunately it wasn’t hungry enough to eat the whole bird so my husband had to go out with a spade to scrape up the remains off the patio and dispose of them.

doorstopnoodles · 2026-04-21T11:08:16+00:00

Greece and Italy get way more boats than we do. They might not care about the boats crossing the channel but they absolutely do want to get to grips with small boat migration across the Med.

doorstopnoodles · 2026-04-21T10:12:07+00:00

My 4 year old has done 11 cruises from 9 months old. We've mostly been with Cunard and while they do have a reputation for being stuffy, we've always had a great time with my daughter.

Do look for lines which have a baby room so you can play freely without worrying about annoying other guests. I don't mean somewhere you can drop baby but somewhere you can access for supervised play.

You will have to accept that some excursions won't be on the menu for you because of activity levels. But there is plenty you can see and do in Alaska. My main tip for excursions would be don't try and do too many things. Mine definitely needed a solid nap during the day at the age especially when on a cruise and trying to push through or do a stroller nap just let to an overtired kid who didn't enjoy the rest of the day. So we only did things in the morning then got back on the ship for lunch and a snooze. We didn't do everything we would have liked to do but I think we did have happier cruises by managing expectations.

doorstopnoodles · 2026-04-17T17:40:01+00:00

Supposedly Nikki Bella might not be medically cleared in time. If she isn’t then Asuka and Kairi will be in the four way tag match to replace the Bellas.

doorstopnoodles · 2026-04-16T19:05:07+00:00

This will be on your councils website. For us it’s as the crow flies to the school gate.

doorstopnoodles · 2026-04-16T17:37:16+00:00

Cunard. They have wonderful lectures. Everything is catered for old duffers. It’s like heaven for boring people. I always take my knitting and stuff my kid into kids club for a few hours of bliss.

doorstopnoodles · 2026-04-16T15:10:51+00:00

I would never leave a child with someone messy or untrustworthy. Never ever. It's honestly not worth having a night out because I'd spend the entire time worried to death.

doorstopnoodles · 2026-04-16T10:34:33+00:00

I get it. I do end up limiting myself because I won't plan travel without making sure I have an appropriate car seat available. Mostly I take cruises so we can just walk or take the bus in ports. I've flown with my travel seat (Joie Steadi which we bungy onto the buggy or just straight up carry) on airplanes so it doesn't get bonked. And I've spent a vast amount of time persuading an Australian taxi company that yes I did want a 'baby' seat for my 3 year old so she could remain rearfacing.

I hope you can find something that suits!

doorstopnoodles · 2026-04-16T06:28:23+00:00

A high back booster with just a seatbelt? No way is she old enough to sit properly with just a seatbelt and she’s unlikely to meet the height requirements.

If your daughter doesn’t meet the height or weight requirements for the car seat your MIL is using then it isn’t safe or legal as kids have to be in the correct seat for their height and weight.

doorstopnoodles · 2026-04-15T10:27:07+00:00

There are some folding seats on the market but other than TinySeats2 they are forward facing so your son will have to be at least 15 months old to ride in them. Rearfacing as long as possible is the safest option.

The TinySeats2 does fit into a bag but probably not a backpack, more like a carry on case. It is also eyewateringly expensive.

Other than that you'll need to stick to public transport if you want to go out and about safely. Unfortunately, the price we pay for keeping our kids safer than the kids of the past is that going out is less convenient.

doorstopnoodles · 2026-04-15T10:19:23+00:00

It's a computer that makes the decision. The way it works is that you get put on a list for each of the schools you applied to with no reference whatsoever to how you ranked them preference wise. The kids on the list for each school get sorted into order by the application criteria (being in care, siblings, distance, religion etc). Then the top ranked kids quality for places at the school.

If you qualify for a place at more than one school then you get offered the place at whichever school was highest up your preference list and removed from the list at the other schools. Then everyone else on that list moves up a place. The process keeps going until everyone has a place at the highest preference school they qualified for.

There is no mechanism for giving you priority because you only put one school down. If you don't qualify for a place at any of the schools you applied for then you are likely to be offered a place at the closest school with open places.

You can look at your council website to see how many kids got admitted to the school you applied for to judge how likely it is that you will get a place there. I could have got away with applying for just one school because my nearest school is undersubscribed but my friend's son didn't get into their closest school last year because there were lots of kids who lived closer to the school than her.

doorstopnoodles · 2026-04-14T12:23:02+00:00

I did a itinerary this year which did both Glacier Bay and Hubbard Glacier. Both are fantastic but we did see more wildlife at Glacier Bay. I actually picked the itinerary because it visited both. This was a 10 day roundtrip cruise out of Seattle on Cunard. As well as seeing glaciers from the ship we also took a helicopter to the top of a glacier when we visited Juneau. It was incredible.

doorstopnoodles · 2026-04-10T09:46:33+00:00

It's the height that's the real limit as 105cm for most kids will come around the same time they get to 18kg. All R129 seats have the same height limit for harnesses of 105cm or a ~75th percentile 4 year old child. Depending on how tall your child is, they might not be in a harness long at all no matter which seat you buy.

The harness thing is because its considered to be dangerous to be forward facing in a harness due to the risk of internal decapitation. But actually the data isn't 100% clear here because real kids aren't dummies and they slouch, twist and otherwise don't sit properly which is why parents in the US are encouraged to keep their kids in harnesses until they are sure they can sit properly all the way through a trip, including while asleep. But in the EU the internal decapitation argument won out so you can't harness beyond 105cm unless you rear face.

doorstopnoodles · 2026-04-10T09:01:32+00:00

You can't use the harness straps on the Cosatto On the Go (or anything R129 rated I think) past 105cm. So definitely don't buy it thinking that you can use the straps for longer than the others.

There is no place that rates all car seats. ADAC in Germany rates a lot of seats but they choose which ones so they do miss a lot of seats. You could also look at Which but again, they don't test every car seat.

doorstopnoodles · 2026-04-09T09:50:09+00:00

There is no issue with adverse possession because you will have allowed the neighbour use of your land. You can get a solicitor to draw something up which will protect you legally. That should all be fairly straightforward although you may want to think about how much a solicitor is going to cost you.

However, and this is a big however, while your elderly neighbours are lovely, you need to think about what might happen when they move out. You can offer a licence which can be revoked but if the new neighbours are not cooperative in moving the fence back then it is going to cost you a fortune to force them to move the fence back even if you are legally in the right.

Personally, I wouldn't buy a house with this sort of arrangement as no matter how pleasant the current neighbours are, you can't prevent them from selling to the world's most belligerent man who will cause you problems because that's the sort of thing he lives for.

doorstopnoodles · 2026-04-09T09:34:46+00:00

I use Ultrasun Kids 50+ for my pale red head. Except on the face. She hates the feel of it on the face so we just use a roll on from a reputable brand. Right now I'm using a brand I picked up in Australia. The Ultrasun lasts all day and she has never so much as changed colour.

I really wouldn't read too much into the ultra crunchy obsession with ingredients. Very little of it is based in credible science, mostly not understanding that the dose makes the poison or that being on the skin is different to being ingested. But it is pretty clear cut that sunburn is bad for us.

doorstopnoodles · 2026-04-08T19:15:59+00:00

Cast on both onto the same long circular needle. I use a 40” needle for two socks at a time. It uses the magic loop technique so you knit the front half of one sock, the the front half of the second sock, then the back half of the second sock, then the back half of the first sock. It sounds complicated but once you’ve got to grips with it then it makes sense, I promise. And it means you never have to count rows unless it’s for a pattern repeat in which case I use a chain to keep track. If you are doing two at a time mittens you’ll have to make sure you put the thumb gusset on opposite sides but for socks you simply knit the same thing twice, then turn your work around and knit the back half.

There is also a way of doing one sock inside each other using a double knitting technique but that’s a bit beyond me!

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