Need seating advice from those with minivans and toddler/infants/older kids

[DeChRi]

X-posted in Parenting-
We have a Honda Odysey. The center row has a removal middle seat which we never have in. DD1 is nearly 11yo. DD2 will be 2.5yo when new baby comes. New baby enroute this May. I also tote another 11yo to and from school once a week.

So how do I position the carseats? My first thoughts was....I put the toddler in the left middle where she is now, leave the center seat out, and the infant in the right middle. Then just have DD1 and friends squeeze through to the back row when they load and unload. But they have big backpacks and it is a tight squeeze across infant or toddler seats.

I don't think I want to put DD2 all the way in the back though. I had the thought of putting in the middle seat and putting DD2 on the far left and seeing about having room to safely attach the infant seat in the middle, then flip up the right side of older kids to climb through to the back.

How the heck do I situate them all???

[confustication]

We have an 8yo, a 20 month old, and a 6 month old.

The 20 month old is in the back on he passenger side. The 6 month old is in the seat directly behind the driver. The seat behind the front passenger flips up and forward for easy access to the rear, and the 8 year old rides wherever she likes- we just move the BPB to her choice of seat.

The two seats in the middle row can be in a 'forward' position or a 'rear position' (closer to the front, or closer to the back. The one on the passenger side is in the forward position, and the one on the drivers side is in the rear position. This allows easy rear-facing spacing.

[dkenagy]

I assume the 8-seater Odyssey is like the 8-seater Sienna we had; we had a toddler seat on the left-center, infant seat in the center-center (this seat can be moved slightly forward in the Sienna, which we did) and left the right-center seat out of the van to allow more access to the back seat (where we had 2 kids in boosters).

[redpajama]

We have an Odyssey, too. Our three are 5, 3 and 6 months.

When we don't have the 8th seat in (which we actually use quite a lot, since one of the perks of having the van is all the carpooling we can do--and we use all 8 seats at least every week or two), we put the two youngest (both rear-facing in Radians) in the middle row--the 3-year-old on the passenger side and the baby on the driver's side. My 5-year-old is in a forward-facing Radian, and his seat is in the third row. We fold the seat next to his flat (into the floor) so that he can easily climb in and out the back door, which he often does. Otherwise, he just climbs over the middle row.

The even *better* configuration, though, when we aren't using the 8th seat, is to one of the middle seats to the center of the van (where the "extra seat" goes) so that the space for crawling through is on the side (we usually put it on the passenger side, but you could do either). That way your 11-year-old doesn't have to get past a carseat to get to the space in the center to crawl back (make sense?).

Once my 3-year-old is (a) forward-facing and (b) buckling/unbuckling her own car seat, I might move her to the third row with her brother, but I don't know. It would make it easier for non-car-seat-using-passengers to get in and out in the middle row, but I don't want to have to climb back there to buckle/unbuckle her, and when she's buckling herself, I prefer for her to be FF so I can easily check to see that she's properly harnessed (chest clip where it should be, straps not twisted, et cetera). With an 11-year-old, though, it might be an option to have the 2.5-year-old back there if you trust your 11-year-old to buckle the 2.5-year-old's carseat harness.