when do you buy a mini van

It’s happened. Stop the presses. Wait–roll the presses & print this hot off the press: Nell owns a minivan. Nell will be driving said minivan. Around town. Toting & hauling her three kids. Driving to both the coop & Costco. Moms group & date night. You may wonder why I have mixed feelings about the minivander. This is a change from my years of hatred. When I was pregnant with SuperBoy, AA and I bought our first car together. We walked around the lot with an over eager salesman. He showed us a minivan with a huge grin on his face. Boy, we were his target audience. Pregnant woman, young couple, car shopping, of course we would spring for the vander. In a moment’s flash, his face fell as he realized I would rather die a death of serf in the Middle Ages than drive a minivan. He moved on to the Rav4 Toyota with a third row. Why? Because we had researched the heck out of it and AA found the one Rav4 in Minnesota that had a third row. Why the third row? Because we could fit four kids in there! Maybe even five! And two adults! Clearly I had never actually seen what sized child could fit in the very small third row. In our few weeks of having three kids, and shoving SuperBoy in the third row, squeezing SweetPea into the second row, and shoving the driver’s seat forward, ahhhhhhh. You see where this is going. But…