I need some advice please - which seats?

I'm about to need two new seats and I need them to fit in the 2nd row of a 1999 Suburban in the center and behind the driver.

My son is 1 year old next Tuesday and currently in a Chicco Keyfit in the middle seat. He has about 1 inch of room until the top of the shell but between 2 and 3 inches once he's settled in a bit. No where near the weight limit.

My daughter is 2 1/2 and 30 lbs forward facing in a Britax Marathon that expires in July behind the driver.

They will both need new seats soon and I want to get them during the Britax sale if I decide to go with Britax. I love Britax because of the easy install and comfort for the kids. I'm open to other solutions though because I"m not sure if 2 marathons will fit FF (eventually) in those spots. I know they'll fit one rear and one forward.

What would you get? There will be no more kids to pass these seats down to.

Solutions I've thought of -

2 marathons and having them use those until they're ready for booster

1 marathon and 1 Frontier or Nautilus (which one?)

2 nautilus if they baby will fit in the chicco for long enough


I'm open to other solutions as well. The seat behind the driver is particularly tricky to get a good install in. The seat belt comes up from the floor a bit ahead of the crack where the seat back meets the cushion and it buckles into the crack. Plus the shoulder harness is very high and it makes the seat want to tilt. The Britax is ok to install there because of the built in lock offs. I don't know if anything else would work because I haven't tried. We've just always had a Marathon there.

I would go with a Frontier and a Marathon. The Keyfit won't last long enough for the baby to go into a Nautilus, we recommend rear-facing much longer than that around here. :twocents:

Baby should go into a convertible rear-facing, not straight into the Nautilus. The American Academy of Pediatrics recommends rear-facing as long as possible, and best practice is to keep the child rear-facing as long as possible, to 35 pounds preferably.

Why do you have the KeyFit center and Marathon behind the driver currently? If one child is front-facing and another is rear-facing, the recommendation is that the front-facing child be in the center seat. Of course that is assuming that the seats fit in that configuration and you can get a good install there.

pixels99 said:

Baby should go into a convertible rear-facing, not straight into the Nautilus. The American Academy of Pediatrics recommends rear-facing as long as possible, and best practice is to keep the child rear-facing as long as possible, to 35 pounds preferably.

Why do you have the KeyFit center and Marathon behind the driver currently? If one child is front-facing and another is rear-facing, the recommendation is that the front-facing child be in the center seat. Of course that is assuming that the seats fit in that configuration and you can get a good install there.

Click to expand...

So my older son can entertain the baby on car trips. My in-laws live 45 minutes away and my parents live and hour and 15 minutes away so when we go anywhere it's usually a longer trip.

I'm not sure I could install the infant base in the outboard position. Like I said, it's hard to get a good install there.

Why the frontier over the nautilus, btw?