UPPAbaby - Aria

Are you sure it was the Aria? Were you possibly lifting it with the base attached? The Aria is one of the lightest car seats on the market. It’s under 6 lbs. My Chicco Keyfit30 is 9.5 lbs for comparison.

My wife and I make good money, and are definitely doing well. That being said, she sometimes falls under the spell of "higher price = higher quality" and needs to get brought down to earth. We bought an expensive Uppababy car seat and it was horrible for our baby. Seriously she had panic attacks at the thought of using it.  Don't be too overwhelmed by the high cost brand recommendations. Some are great, but sometimes hype is just hype. 

The uppababy car seats notoriously are hard to install at the correct angle. The CPST we saw said she hates installing/ checking them. We have a Clek liing, is it better than other cheaper car seats? Probably not. We liked the fact it was a Canadian company and had the load leg so that’s why we went with it. Nurtured in Halifax is where we ordered our car seat and stroller (Uppababy Vista V3) from. Definitely worth a trip to the store to test things out. It’s about a 4.5 hour drive for me but it was worth it.