Can you recommend a good car seat for twins?

I was just about to ask you the same question, because the answer on this end is "no."

The car seats on which we had blown hot and cold are severely in the "cold" column right now. I don't want to bore you with the details, but then again, if you've been following this blog you clearly have some time on your hands, so here goes.

We selected a stroller and infant carrier combination on the basis that the stroller was the "Twin Sport" and was labeled as "Compatible with the Combi Shuttle." However, you find out when you read the manual (conveniently located inside the box) that this particular stroller is compatible with one Combi Shuttle, not two. The side-by-side stroller configuration is designed not to accommodate two infant carriers, which seems to belie the "Twin" nomenclature.

Never fear, say we, we'll just install the car seats into a universal infant seat carrier until they're big enough to sit in the stroller without the infant carriers. But then we discovered that the Shuttle is not compatible with any of the twin universal infant seat carriers. The various latching mechanisms that secure it to the base are proprietary. This fact is also omitted from Combi's marketing materials.

So we called Combi and asked for suggestions. "No problem," they say over the phone. "Our Counterpart 2 tandem stroller will accommodate two infant carriers! Just return the Twin Sport and get yourself a Counterpart 2!" Okay, "Counterpart 2" is a little less intuitive a choice for infant twins than "Twin Sport," but we go online to look. And indeed it appears you can install two infant carriers in a Counterpart 2. There's even a YouTube video demonstrating how it all works. But Ginger noticed something weird on Combi's website. It said it would accommodate a Shuttle infant carrier in the front. So what was the car seat in the back? It was a Combi Connection, an entirely different model car seat sold by Combi. In other words, Combi designed a stroller that will accommodate two different infant carriers, but has no stroller solutions that can accommodate two of the same model. Needless to say, the Shuttle is the most popular and widely available car seat offered by Combi, but God help you if you buy two of them. This seemed too insane to be true.

We called Combi again, and were directed to a supervisor. He admitted that Combi had no solutions whatsoever that involved twins in the same car seat model. Essentially, he said the store should have pointed this out to us, and alternatively that we should have paid better attention to the specific phrasing on the stroller box: "Compatible with Combi Shuttle." Notice: Not "Shuttles," plural. Ah, good one. You sure got us there, Mr. Customer Service Supervisor. And what about the word "Twin" on the box, which generally tends to imply plurality to the English speaking world? Well, he said, it was always possible to unbelt and remove one of the babies from the infant carrier and place them into the stroller without the car seat. "Works just fine," he said. "Used it myself, with my two kids," he said. Oh, you have twins? "No," he said. Do you see the flaw in the use of the word "Twin"? Can you market a car seat to parents of twins that is horrendously matched to the actual experience of removing twins from a car and placing said twins into a stroller, and how that experience of twins might be different from your own experience when one of the children is, in fact, a toddler, and therefore by definition not a twin of the infant in the infant carrier?

Exasperating.

By the way, my wife pointed out to me after the fact that Combi is not an Italian company. It's based in Carol Stream, Illinois, but is owned by a Japanese company. I hereby retract all aspersions by implication against Italian designers, and am proceeding forthwith to buy myself a used Fiat 124 Spider, which, it turns out, is just as capable of accommodating two Combi Shuttle car seats as the strollers manufactured by Combi International Corporation.

So, the question remains: Can you recommend a good car seat for twins?