OV9

It suits it well and does look just like an undercover police car

GG. wrote: Fri Jul 10, 2020 9:38 am That's a funny looking Alphard.

In a double negative sort of way?

Very nice. Is this instead of or as well as the 235i?

JonMad wrote: Fri Jul 10, 2020 10:44 am Very nice. Is this instead of or as well as the 235i?

Instead. Baby due November, so need something bigger, the wife gave her car to her SiL, but that's another story. EOTR on the 235i to follow.

Down to one car?

Yup. But she can borrow her parents' cars so it's not a big issue.

Just from recent experience as a new parent, she’ll need a car at home every day. For sanity my wife would go out with Sam somewhere most days - shops/classes/weigh ins/library/etc... and you obviously need pushchair/seat/etc all loaded and ready to go because you can’t be fussing about putting seats in when you are holding a baby. Then there’s the “going for a drive to get baby to sleep” routine. My missus’ car did 10k miles on her maternity leave year!

How about a cheap fun Boxster to go with the sensible family car ?

Rich B wrote: Fri Jul 10, 2020 10:58 am Then there’s the “going for a drive to get baby to sleep” routine. My missus’ car did 10k miles on her maternity leave year!

Yeh, we will be getting another car for sure. FiL is looking out for a V6 Alphard but finding one that's in the right condition and the right price is slightly tricky, it's not like there are lots of choose from. She really likes the touring so it can easily be "her" car and I get something more Evo later. Recently, the FiL and I did have talks about going halves on a used GTR...

Alex_ wrote: Fri Jul 10, 2020 11:08 am

Rich B wrote: Fri Jul 10, 2020 10:58 am Then there’s the “going for a drive to get baby to sleep” routine. My missus’ car did 10k miles on her maternity leave year!

Thankfully we never needed to do that!: A mate of mine did though - it was weird, his kid would be bawling away and literally as soon as it was across the house threshold it would stop. He back and forthed it one night to prove it

We’d regularly go out for 1-2 hour drives to nowhere - he wasn’t a good sleeper for the first year!

Ours was the opposite for the first year. Slept fine at home but would scream in the car - put a bit of a limit on going anywhere

Alex_ wrote: Fri Jul 10, 2020 8:52 am

LPG conversion

Rich B wrote: Fri Jul 10, 2020 11:24 am We’d regularly go out for 1-2 hour drives to nowhere - he wasn’t a good sleeper for the first year!

I regularly had to go for a drive with the boys to get them to nap if things got too frazzled. Never long drives though, record to go from screaming to asleep was less than three minutes. Never more than 20.

Edit: they then transferred to bed without issue.

Getting the sleeping nipper from the car seat to the bed without waking him is THE challenge of this year for us. Luckily he goes down in our arms most nights but when we've needed to take a trip around the block it's rendered useless 50% of the time because of the decamp waking him at the end.

Have you tried sitting them upright so their head's on your chest? Worked every time for ours if he was struggling - I always assumed the sound of the heartbeat sent them off

Good suggestion. I'll try that tonight. He's very fidgety though and doesn't like to be still when he's tired and should be getting to sleep. We'll see what happens.

Might as well ask on here, what baby seat and base are you guys using for newborns? It's a bloody minefield out there.

We had an Aton 4 iirc. Was the most compact and one of the safest. Even in my E91 though it still meant the front passenger seat needed to move forward a reasonable amount. I don't know how the F31 compares to E91 for internal space.

I'd recommend checking baby seat dims against the space between passenger seat back and rear seat back to double check that what you're leaning towards doesn't compromise the front passenger too much

Good point. Cheers Merv.