Car seats are one of hardest things to pick out…it took me a while to pick this car seat, as with all of my purchases, but I decided on the Graco Milestone All-in-1 Convertible Car Seat for both of my boys and haven’t had a problem with either of them. I’m satisfied with the purchase of both.
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All about the Graco Milestone
The Graco Milestone comes with suede inserts. I took them off because I knew my kids backs would be really sweaty using it.
These photos display the amount of recline at each number. It’s really helpful that they added which number coincides with what stage of the seat your child is at. A newborn will need to be rear-facing, reclining at number 1.
This meter lets you know whether or not your car seat is properly installed in your car, basically. You may have your car seat reclined to a 1, but the way your back seats is made, you may need to add a towel under it to help level it. Some back seats are more inclined than others. The ball inside the meter should be in the blue, completely, when rear facing at positions 1 and 2.
In order to recline your car seat you will put your fingers behind the red lever, pull, and push the seat back or pull forward at the same time.
This is the bottom of the car seat. You can see where the recline pull is and how it works. You will pull it towards you.
This strap lets you adjust the tightness of your harness straps. If you make the straps too tight on your child, there is a button or lift up option if you stick your finger inside where the straps come out of the car seat cover. You will push or pull up on that button or lift up option and pull at the straps at the same time to loosen. This is one of my FAVORITE features on this car seat. My infant car seat did not have this and it made things very annoying and unnecessarily complicated. 
In order to adjust the height of the back of the car seat, you put your fingers under the red button lever, with the rest of your hand on top op the car seat, and pull up at the same time… or push down if it’s too high. This is very easy to do.
The chest clip is very easy to push together and pinch to open. I like the provided strap covers because they still allow the chest clip to be in the correct position while not letting my boys get seat belt marks on their necks. Companies make seat belt covers, but they are usually way to bulky and long and the chest clip cannot be in the correct place when you use those.
This strap is for using your cars latch system. If you feel in between where your back seat and back rest meet, there should be metal hooks that you attach these latch hooks to. You just take the latch strap and push it onto the hooks of your car with the red buttons upward until it snaps on. To take them off, you push the red button and pull off of the hooks.
You insert the latch hook as showed below …you don’t need to push the button to attach, only to detach. By pushing the red button, the hook is opened.
You attach the cup holder right in that slit from the picture above…right above the button. You may need to move the car seat cover over, then slide the cup holder into the slit and down.
It is really convenient to have a place to store you car seat manual in case you need help with something. There is also a carrying handle area, right above where that strap comes out of the car seat at the top.
The strap that you see here is for attaching the car seat when forward-facing. You hook it to the hook behind the headrest in the back seat of your car. It is pretty hard to attach and tighten in most cars…pretty annoying, honestly.
This is the latch hook that you connect behind the headrest of the back seat.
In order to loosen the strap to detach it from the latch hook, you will “lift to release.”
The following screenshots were taken from GracoBaby.com
After a while, if you let your kids eat in their car seats, It’ll probably look similar to this, or worse. One of my boys literally poured out a whole bag of snack in his seat… crumbs, EVERYWHERE. The gray car seat cover has been washed multiple times, but those greasy looking spots are NOT coming out. I like the all black – Gotham, car seat better.
•I take a vacuum hose with the corner attachment to suck all the big crumbs. After cleaning all the big crumbs out, I use a toothpick to get even more crumbs. Follow up using a soapy wet towel.
This area between the bottom of the seat and the base where it reclines, can be hard to clean. My tip for making this area to clean is lift the back rest all the way up and recline the seat. You can bang the car seat up a little bit and see what will come out too, but…
Overall, I am happy with my Graco Milestone car seats and would definitely recommend.
Things to note:
•Easy to take covers off to wash
•When I took the cover off of one car seat (haven’t washed the other one yet), where the head cushion area is… the styrofoam came off, so each time I wash it I have to make sure to adjust properly while putting the cover back on.
•We drive a 2010 Ford Fusion and when rear-facing, it is a tight fit behind the drivers seat. My husband is 6’3 so when they were both rear-facing it was tight, but now my 3 year old sits behind my husband, forward-facing.
Suggested Neck Pillow
If you’ll be starting off with this car seat instead of an infant car seat, I suggest purchasing this Boppy Head and Neck support, but DO NOT ADVISE using the part that surrounds your baby’s head, ONLY the neck pillow. When I tried using the head support, I feel like it pushed my babies head forward too far. The neck pillow was GREAT!
Travel Essentials
If you will be traveling with your babies or toddlers and DON’T want to check them in with your bags, you can get car seat travel belts and hook the car seat to your carry-on suitcase. It’s very handy, but I ain’t even gone hold you up, if you’re traveling alone with your baby…say, you have your baby in a carrier, when you get to the gate to get to board the plane, you WILL have to detach the car seat so they can check the car seat at the gate, unless you bought a seat for your baby. Either way, you will need to detach the two.
Bending over and doing all that with a baby is HARD. If this is your situation, I would just get the car seat bags and check it with my luggage. You can purchase car seat bags online or when you check your bags they may have some available for purchase. I know for sure that Southwest Airlines supplies them for $15.
Car sear straps
Car seat Travel bag
I hope I made your car seat search a little easier. If I did, let me know by leaving a comment or message me on social @ HeyChrishinda 😊.
Until my next post…
📸 – Chrishinda
2 comments
Neck pillows should not be used. Like you said they can bush forward the neck and head. In a crash, we don’t know how that will hurt the child. It’s best to always leave the non-regulated stuff out of the car seats, even if they are super cute! this comes from a CPST.
Thanks for your comment, but with this particular neck pillow, the part that goes behind their neck is NOT thick and did NOT push his head forward. The Neck pillow + head support is a 2 piece set… the part that goes OVER his head pushed his head forward, so I didn’t use that piece.