Farewell, Lil Red

When Jerel and I got married, I was driving The Squeezebox--a Honda Accord that I loved. But the frame was bent in a car accident and we had to get rid of it. Since we knew we weren't going to do anything crazy like have kids, we decided to just get me a small car. A tiny car, in fact. A two-door, no back-seat access for installing car seats or for installing children into aforementioned car seats, and no trunk space for groceries, strollers, and diaper bags for the children installed in the car seats. In fact, no trunk at all. All I can say is it seemed like a good idea at the time.

My favorite part when we got her was that the hood of the car is so teeny tiny. I was telling Jerel's mom about it and she said it was like Little Red Riding Hood, since my car is red and has a little hood, and thus the official naming of the car was completed.

4 and a half years (and 2 babies) later it's time for something bigger. It didn't seem too urgent until I was quite pregnant with Eliza and suddenly didn't have the energy, or the requisite narrow waistline, for climbing into the back to buckle Isaiah into his (still rear-facing) car seat. And so that task fell to Jerel. After Eliza was born, I couldn't put her car seat into the car for a couple of weeks because of the c-section, so again that task fell to Jerel. And suddenly a 2-door car was definitely too small! And although the "make it do or do without" pioneer woman inside me would like to think that I could have managed with 8 kids and a couple of oxen to get us & Lil Red around, it's probably not true. Just this once Jerel might've been right, and we might really have needed a new car...

So Tuesday was the big day. Our car-buying-helper-guy drove up in the new Acura MDX (new to us, not new new) and drove away in Lil Red. I'm surprisingly a bit sad to see her go. I mean we drove both kids home from the hospital in that car, and now someone else will be using her for boring, non-sentimental, plain old commuting. I told our car-buying-helper-guy to please let the new owners know that her name is Lil Red and to please take good care of her.