Well, I believe everyone has officially talked me out of the Symphony, although my girls are small and probably won't reach 40lbs until 4 or so anyway. I don't like the cover anyway.
Yes I do plan on keeping them rearfacing, especially after reading all of the threads on this site. I did want them forward facing because our van has the DVD entertainment system which would be very convenient on trips back and forth (6 hours) to the inlaws. So
because of that I am a little conflicted....however safety is first!
I do really like the Marathon's with the exception of the harness adjustments. I really like the infinite adjustment system in the EFTA, but don't like the side knobs as it seams they would be hard to adjust rear facging. And the EFTA and TF seem so wide I was concerned they would block the "isle" to the 3rd row of the mini van. This is just a really hard decision to make. My Mom thinks I am crazy asking all of these questions and taking so long to decide. Aren't they all the same she asks....no they are not!
Remember that 4yrs old, we would still want them in a harnessed seat.
We really don't recommend boosters until 5-7yrs old (6 being the ideal minimum, but every kid being built differently, we have to concede defeat for some 5yr olds)
Remember your mom is from an age where there wasn't so much to choose from in the way of child safety seats.
Take her with you and show her the limits of each seat and what differences there are in terms of comfort, weight and height limits, and price range.
Not only will it teach her that this really is not a simple decision (especially for a first time mom), but it will give you someone to keep the babies busy while you are thinking and deciding.
Now, remember that the babies will not care as much as you think about the dvd player. They haven't seen it, so they can't miss what they've never had.
But more interesting is that many parents here have found that babies will turn their head to one side and then tilt it up (like if they were looking at the sky in a stroller) and watch it that way.
Otherwise, a VERY soft and easily secured (and very securely secured) mirror on the back of the vehicle seat angled correctly would allow them to watch it (yes, left and right would be reversed, but babies don't mind) if you have VERY long trip and really want that.
Otherwise, I would think that music would work better, anyway.
Many of us don't even have dvd players in our vehicles and find that we're still fine on long road trips.
when Ruthie, my youngest, was still rf, we drove 8-10hrs to and from PA (we live in VA) to spend Superbowl Weekend with my ILs (the steelers were playing, so we wanted to be with the family AND have better access to post game merchandise if our team won,which they did)
With planning ahead, she just slept the whole way up and then slept part of the way down and was just content to look out the back hatch (we had my bil and sil with us so we had all 3 kids in the back row) and play with soft toys.
We did take longer coming down because we stopped every couple of hours when they were awake (though I swear the pee breaks before the kids nodded off going up were more inconvenient, since it was so dark... we went up during the night and came back in the wee hours of morning)
I just made sure to have drinks, snacks, toys that they hadn't seen ever or at least in a long time (we rotate batches of toys) and we played the radio.