So I don’t like to admit when I make a mistake, I mean, what woman does? But being the frugal woman that I am, I can’t imagine keeping this a secret.

When I was newly pregnant and had to create a registry, I was clueless.  I had no idea what I needed to register for, or what I would need for this stage called motherhood. I enlisted the help of my friend Aimee (who already had two babes) to do my registry for me. And that was that.

Fast forward a few months. I already went through the infant car seat and was looking forward to switching to the next stage. We had registered for one already, and we had one for one of our two cars. But when we were approached by Diono to use one of their car seats, we jumped at the chance. We needed two of this stage car seat anyway right?!

Sooo….Here’s where I admit I made the mistake. I didn’t look enough into carseats before I bought one. Or two. I put the infant car seat on my registry, along with the toddler one (which by the way is uber expensive), and never really thought twice. Turns out, I didn’t ever need BOTH car seats. Did you know that Diono car seats are able to be used from birth until they grow out of them? I mean, for you thrifty people like me, why would we buy two car seats when we only NEED to buy one?

So I switched Sawyer from her infant carrier to the Diono Radian 3RXT carrier around age one. She literally could not have been happier. She has more freedom to move (she was scrunched in her infant carrier) and she loves the better angle. Don’t get me wrong, I still think once I can turn this thing around we will have much better car rides, but for now this is the best we can get!

I’m kind of upset that as a frugal mama I didn’t realize earlier that I only needed one car seat. The amount of money I could have saved is embarrassing. I urge you all to look into the Diono car seats before you purchase two car seats, or put them on your registry. You don’t NEED to buy two stages! It’s such a lifesaver (not to mention it’s a money-saver too).