Clek Foonf

[bearwithmoi]

DD just fell asleep for an hour and woke up crying that her rear hurts! It feels so hard/no squishy. I can't believe I wanted this seat for so long! What can I do?

 

[cowgirlsmommy]

My daughter has no comfort issues so I'm no help there. She sleeps extremely well in her foonf.

 

[twinstars]

You all have me really worried! I LOVE my foonf in our prius but my girl is only a year old. I would not have purchased one if I had read how horrible it is to put the older kids in. Right now there is no problem putting her in. I do disagree about the directions though, I thought they were very easy, user-friendly and had NO problems with it. I don't have car seat experience but I felt like the Radian directions were terrible and I started to wish I had gotten two foonfs. It was actually fun to install. Now I think I will be wishing for two radians if it really is that hard in a prius when they are a bit taller next year. I will say my girl can see out of the window while my son in the radian cannot. They are too young to tell me about the seat comfort but they have both slept in their seats. My son sweats equally bad in both seats. I have no vision problems with it directly behind the driver. There is more leg room in the foonf but my son just hangs his legs over the side of the radian so in that way he has plenty of room too.

 

[Clek CPST]

You all have me really worried! I LOVE my foonf in our prius but my girl is only a year old. I would not have purchased one if I had read how horrible it is to put the older kids in. Right now there is no problem putting her in. I do disagree about the directions though, I thought they were very easy, user-friendly and had NO problems with it. I don't have car seat experience but I felt like the Radian directions were terrible and I started to wish I had gotten two foonfs. It was actually fun to install. Now I think I will be wishing for two radians if it really is that hard in a prius when they are a bit taller next year. I will say my girl can see out of the window while my son in the radian cannot. They are too young to tell me about the seat comfort but they have both slept in their seats. My son sweats equally bad in both seats. I have no vision problems with it directly behind the driver. There is more leg room in the foonf but my son just hangs his legs over the side of the radian so in that way he has plenty of room too.

I think ease of loading really is an individual thing. I have owned a lot of seats, and loaded my kids at older ages in to different seats, and without naming any names, some of those have had much less loading room than what the Foonf has in the vehicles I've had it in so far. Others it has been comparable. I had the Foonf in a small neon last week and it had a good amount of loading room - so I think it really just depends on individual expectations so far as loading room goes, and possibly technique and the angle the seat is installed at. (I always rotated my kids in bum first, protecting their head with my arm until it cleared the doorway. With one seat I still sometimes bumped my son's head - that seat was the least amount of loading room out of any seat I've owned though.)

 

[Persimmon]

You all have me really worried! I LOVE my foonf in our prius but my girl is only a year old. I would not have purchased one if I had read how horrible it is to put the older kids in.

I make my 3.5 DS climb into his Foonfs himself. If he is messing around in the car too much, I just tell him to get in the seat before I count to 5 or no toys for the ride. He has been climbing in himself (with help at first) since a bit older than 2. He knows to push his butt so it is all the way back, I hold the crotch buckle so he can buckle himself, he closes the chest clip and moves it mostly to the right place. I first started doing it to cut down on the resistance to getting into the car seat since he felt like he was doing it more himself rather than something done to him. I also want to ingrain the concept of always actively doing something to protect himself whenever he gets into a car.

 

[creideamh]

I agree, it's an individual thing. I tried having DD get into it herself, and there just wasn't enough room between the seat and door frame and the seat and the roof for her to get situated herself (and again, even with me helping, she still kept hitting her head.) Sitting high makes no difference to either of us; in fact, I'd rather her sit low near the car's frame, but that wasn't a factor in my decision. It's strictly my opinion, where my car + my kid + me + Foonf just did not equal harmony.

 

[eduller]

I will agree that the average parent would have a hard time with all the parts and assembly. There were a lot of fiddly bits to attach when I de-boxed the thing. I have installed many different seats in many different cars, and I was even a little intimidated when I took it out of the box. It took me about 20 minutes to figure out how to get the rebound bar on because you kind of have to actually hit it, and I was a little hesitant to go banging on a $500 car seat. The cotter pins are stupid and tiny and irritating as well. I have very small hands and fingers, and I cannot imagine someone with sausage fingers finagling that thing into its little hole.

All that being said, I am very happy with the seat after all of that. It is one solid monster. My daughter loves it and always asks me why we can't put it in mommy's car. I have the snowberry color, and pink is not her thing at all so it's not the color that she loves. I chose the Foonf particularly because her caregiver has moderate arthritis in his hands, and it was by far the easiest to buckle and unbuckle when compared with the Peg, the Radian, the Graco Mysize, the Nextfit, and uhh something else. My daughter can climb into the seat, and completely buckle herself in. She's 2.5 and a tall and solid girl (40.5 inches and 35 lbs), and she has plenty of leg and shoulder room.

I have the Foonf in our caregiver's car, so I don't use it on a daily basis. It was a b**ch to install in this particular car, but I think it's because it's an '88 Oldsmobile and the back seat is crazy squishy and old. It installed in about 1 minute in my minivan, and I also installed it FF just for kicks and that was just click, click, and bob's your uncle.