Graco - 4Ever DLX Slim 4-in-1 Infant to Toddler Car Seat

We have the graco dlx 4 in 1. It’s one that grows with them and has some cup holders for them ☺️

We have used a chicco keyfit 35 and graco slimfits with no issues. Currently have two rear facing graco turn2mes. The passenger seat is tight, but we frequently drive ~3hours to my in-laws with no issues. Husband is 6’ and I’m 5’7”. The rear facing seats are just a phase, and I love the car. We do plan on a third child in a year or two and anticipate needing to get a new vehicle. I’ve managed to fit three across car seats though, so I may just wait until the baby is here to decide if we need a minivan. Cargo space can be hard, but we also typically travel with two large dogs. So we have used a roof cargo bag or a hitch cargo box. Prefer the hitch mount. We also manage to fit a bob duallie stroller in the trunk which is quite a feat.

Agreed on your comment about “think about your lifestyle.” For us, we like to travel, live in the city and didn’t want to carry around a bulky stroller so we opted for the Zen yoyo. Just came back from our first trip and it was a great stroller (we spotted the same stroller a lot among other parents). For car seats, we got something like a Graco 4in1 where you can still use it to toddler age. For diaper bag, could’ve gone without one and used any type of bag but we got the LLB and that worked well as a carry on/diaper bag.

I have the Graco forever and it's honestly not that bad if you need to take it out and move it around. It's in my SUV for 90% of the time and when my sons dad takes him, it gets moved to his car.

I used the Graco Forever and it fits Ok in the i4 - but id I remember well you can't use it with the car belt as its too wide. Any seat doesnt fit well anyway, the i4 is the the best car for the back seats, but it works. As for the boosters it was not easy to find some narrow enough to fit with the seat belts, but one of the Evenflo made it. Thats what i am using now.

We bought the Chicco KeyFit 35 infant car seat and the Graco 4Evr Dlx convertible car seat. I panicked when someone said their hospital would only release them with an infant car seat, so we bought the KeyFit later. We bought the Mockingbird Single Stroller with the bassinet.

We used the Graco4Ever from the start with both kids. The hospitals were fine with us leaving with baby stroller with bassinet (Yoyo). In retrospect, it would have been more pleasant to have the infant seat for transitions in cold winter weather but we all lived.

I would look at recalls and safety ratings for the rotating seats. When I was looking there were some open recalls on the top one for the lock wearing out/ folks forgetting to lock it back to the spot? Idk, I stopped right there. I don’t take risks. I’m already tired, I don’t want to add another step to making sure my son is 100% because I would never forgive myself. The top 2 safety rated that year were the ones I bought. The Graco dlx (?) and the Nuna ravv. My son doesn’t exactly love the graco (not as comfy I guess) and we keep that in the truck which he doesn’t ride in much. He loves the Nuna. Much more comfy it seems. Also Nuna is not a US brand. US brands sometimes only go for US testing standards. Nuna goes for the US and Euro ones which have always been higher in my experience. If you ask AI- they say Euro are more ‘comprehensive’ as US safety testing has historically focused on front impact and left out side impact. Also Euro regulations are more stringent on ease of ‘correct’ installation. I would say making sure the Graco was installed correct versus Nuna was a lot more time and effort and obviously top safety is a seat installed incorrectly is going to greatly increase injury potential. The Graco had some reviews that made me trust it- pictures of wrecked cars and moms stating babies were 100% ok/ some had even slept through crash. Good luck finding something you like! We are going to swap my oldest to the Nuna Lumn when the time comes and put the youngest in Ravv. We have a Nuna Pippa for the newborn/ infant stage.

Nope not missing anything 😅good news is your next car seats will last you much, much longer! I’d get four extend2fits. We love extend2fit. Easy to install and lasts forever, rear faces up to 50lbs while most are 40. My oldest is 4 and no plans to move him from that seat anytime soon. Coscos are great for air travel with as they’re so light but I think they’re less comfortable and don’t grow with your children as much. Also a total pain to install. My husband has a graco slim in his that’s lighter and slimmer and very similar though it stops rear facing at 40

We had twins and then a surprise #3 and you honestly can’t go wrong with the Graco car seats. We have the “slim” version of this model and we like it, my twins have another model but still Graco branded.

Look for ones that advertise 3 across. We have the clek, diono and graco slim. They are all about the same. The infant egg ones (clek) that clip into the base take up the most lateral room ime. Both the clek and diono take up a lot of foward space when rear facing. In our tucson the front seats need to move forward quite a bit to accommodate. In our model 3 that is less of an issue despite looking smaller. The graco takes up much less foward space.

We bought one rotating car seat (Nuna) and later a cheaper Graco slim seat for traveling with and the rotating car seat is def the way to go. Getting in and out is a breeze compared to the fixed ones. We still use the Graco for traveling and as a backup in my car. We use the Nuna in the family vehicle 95% of the time

I got whichever version of this is at Costco, have used it since we took him home from the hospital with no regrets! He's 2 now.

My kindergartner has a convertible car seat. She is in the booster configuration, which is a high back booster. We transitioned her a little earlier than we intended because the 5point was starting to trigger her car sickness more as she grew. Our second car, we have Graco booster for the rare times both kids have to be different places.