How do you get two whales in a mini?

Down the M4...

Unless you live in the Scottish Borders of course, in which case the M4 wouldn't help at all.

Anyway,  I digress.

A more important question. How do you get four children in an ordinary sized car?

I say "ordinary sized", but of course given that we already have three children, our car is anything but ordinary sized.  It looks like this:



It's even that colour.

It's not what you might call a nippy little number. It's not sporty, it's not speedy, it's not swish and it turned out to be rubbish in the snow, but it has one major advantage: you can get three small children, three large car seats and a vast amount of kit in it in (relative) comfort.

Only now we're expecting a fourth.  And I don't know where we're going to put him.

I'm not good with cars.  This one is the first car I've owned and we didn't even get that until just before A&S were born.  At university I had a bike. It was pink and I loved it until it got a buckled front wheel on the way back from my last final, so I abandoned it chained to a bike rack and for all I know it's still there (bad girl).  Then I had a tube ticket and a pair of comfy trainers. Then I had a baby and everyone told me that I'd need a car, but I like the tube, and I don't like driving, so although I upgraded occasionally to a bus ticket (easier for the pushchair) we stuck with the no car and the smug feeling that we were doing something for the environment when really it just suited us fine.

Then they said we were going to jump from being three to five, and I caved.

But, as I say, a mere two and a bit years later, I'm not sure it's what we need.

I've thought about this:

It's called a  multimac, and it fixes into your isofix points and magically turns your back seat into four childseats (with optional clippableonable baby seat).  It's also, while not cheap, significantly cheaper than a new car. Sounds perfect? Well it could be but it strikes me that they'll be sitting awfully close together, and given that any journey longer than about ten minutes with my three already invariably degenerates into a slightly less muddy car-seat reenactment of trench warfare, with endless millimetre-sized incursions into enemy territory met with excessive and violent reprisals, I'm not sure that putting them closer together than they already are is really the most sensible plan. 

So then I thought about putting two of them in the middle seat, and two in the pop up seats at the back. Which could be fine, but what about getting them in and out of the dreaded car seats?  How does that work when the only way at those seats is by leaning over from the middle?

So B says we're going to have to do something like this:

But the thing is, that while I'm not a car person, I'm also most definitely not a van person, and especially not a van that looks more than a little like a hearse.  I realise that having four children means there will be a lot of compromises, but I'm just not sure I want to start this early.

So, is there a solution? Is there a way to transport four children, all still requiring car seats, in comfort and, if not style, at least something that looks like we might have chosen it because we like it?

Answers on a postcard. Or in the comments box. Please?