Sam has his first new car

Sam is now eleven weeks old.
He had his first round of vaccinations a couple of weeks ago.  They were less traumatic than we thought they'd be, which was good.  They were also a bit frustrating, from the standpoint that we had questions and requests about process and procedure around them, and most of the answers from the nurses boiled down to variations on the theme of "that's not really convenient for us". 
Kate actually called the day before the appointment (or thereabouts) and asked about whether or not we could get a prescription topical anesthetic that is discussed in one of her books.  The nurse that she spoke with took her request as code for "Reassure me that I'm doing the right thing getting my child vaccinated."  Kate deals with this sort of thing better than I do, so it's good that she was on the phone instead of me.  I end up calling people on their offensive behavior in ways that can be counter-productive.  In general, pissing off the people that are going to be sticking needles into your kid is a bad idea.
We'd heard some real horror stories about first time vaccinations from other parents that we know, but we got lucky. 
Not that it was fun.  I didn't think so, Kate didn't think so, and we're pretty sure that Sam really didn't think so.  I have to admit that the nurse that did the injections was pretty good, very quick and clinical about it, which I'm guessing is the best way to minimize the trauma.  Nevertheless, the boy was pissed.  And he let everyone know it.
He was cranky for a couple of days, but that was it.  No fever, or incessant screaming, or reaction at the injection site.  We're not worried about the "risks" of the vaccinations.  Everything that we've read has indicated that the correlation to autism has been conclusively dis-proven. 
I do think it is every parents right to decide about vaccinating or not, but I also think that un-vaccinated kids should be quarantined so that they are only a risk to themselves and don't present a danger to anyone else's kids.
He's sleeping a bit better now.  Still up a lot, but we're getting an average of about four hours a night out of him at the first stretch, then it gets shorter.  We've also had a couple of occasions where he's woken up and we've let him go and he went back to sleep on his own.  We've had way more where he gets progressively more worked up to the point that we have to go get him, but it's a start.
So, the new car...
It's motorcycle season.  That means that I'm riding to work most of the time rather than driving, which means my car has been home for Kate to use.  My car is a Mazda 3 wagon.  Kate doesn't really like it very much, but the four doors meant that it was way easier to get the boy and his car seat into the base.  Her car until last Friday was a Toyota Yaris hatchback.  She loved it, but it was only two door, and getting the car seat into the base was really hard to do.  She has bruises on her thighs from the thing banging against her while she tried to maneuver it into the back seat.  Having access to my Mazda, which is way easier, just highlighted how difficult the Yaris was.
So, I did a ton of research with Consumer Reports, and Edmunds, and Car and Driver.  We test drove a Honda Fit, a Honda CRV, a Hyundai Elantra, a Toyota Matrix, a Subaru Forrester, and a Subaru Impreza.
Initially Kate wanted the Honda Fit.  It's highly rated, inexpensive, and a better configuration than the Yaris.  We went to the dealership and looked at it, but they didn't have a manual we could drive that was ready to go.  We both much prefer manuals to automatics.  Especially in small cars it makes a huge difference in power.  The thing is, nobody drives manuals anymore, and very few get shipped here. 
While we were waiting for a manual Honda Fit we drove and ruled out the Hyundai Elantra (just felt insubstantial and cheap) and the Toyota Matrix (way cramped in the interior with a baby seat installed).  When we got to drive the Fit, it was okay.  Not fantastic, a bit pokey, even with the manual, but okay.  Good gas mileage, very roomy inside, lots of attention to cabin comfort for a small car.  Here was the problem with the Honda:
Traction control.  Traction control is this relatively new thing in cars where the car senses bad road conditions (like ice) and changes the power distribution to the wheels to compensate.  It's standard on all Toyotas, Hyundais, and Subarus (and Mazdas, though we didn't look at those).  On Hondas it's an upgrade.  The only way that we could get traction control in the Honda Fit was to upgrade to the highest model.  The difference between that one and the one below it was traction control and an in-dash navigation system.  We neither need nor want an in-dash navigation system.  The difference in price wasn't that much (around $1500, I think) and if they'd had a manual version of that available we might have gone ahead and bought it.  They didn't though; and the more that Kate thought about it, the more it was sort of offensive to spend an additional premium to get one useless feature and one safety feature that all the other manufacturers that we looked at include in every model.
By the way, I keep referring to it as the "Honda Fit" (rather than just "the Fit") because I'm hoping some Honda corporate stooge is trolling blogs like the Home Depot guy was and then s/he can read this and possibly re-think that strategy.
Honda Fit.
Home Depot.
Anyhow...
We ended up getting a Subaru Impreza.  We got the one manual in the midwest.  It's the perfect size for Kate.  It was a premium model, so it has more bells and whistles than she wanted (though no navigation system, and it was about the same price as the Honda Fit, and the Subaru guys offered us a thousand more than the Honda guys on her Yaris), but she's looking forward to the heated seats in the winter.  It's a sort of odd color for a car (Paprika), and she hates the color, but everything else about it is really pretty good.  It also has traction control and all wheel drive.  And most importantly, she can get Sam in and out of it a lot easier than she could with the Yaris.
Kate goes back to work tomorrow, and I take a week off and do in home child-care.  We hired a nanny who starts next Tuesday.