Labor Day Weekend…Got Plans?

If you aren’t headed out of town this weekend, and you are burned out on the pool, here are some other fun ways to fill out the days:

  • If you have young kids, then there’s no better place to be than the Adventure Theatre in Glen Echo Park on September 3 from 10-4. To celebrate the theatre’s open house, some of the most popular children’s books authors will be signing their books. And all the little pirates can gather round for some loot….or participate in a light saber adventure class demo. Here are the details:   The day’s schedule begins with Light Saber Adventures Class Demo (Grades K-2) and a visit by the Pirate who will share his free Pirate’s Booty with attendees. Additional activities throughout the day include book signings by published children’s book authors Judith Viorst, author of Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day, and Eileen Christelow, author of Five Little Monkeys, as well as readings by Montgomery County’s Chief of Police J. Thomas Manger and Helen Hayes Nominee and star of Lilly’s Purple Plastic Purse, Felicia Curry. Books will be available onsite to purchase. Other class demonstrations include Explore with Dora & Diego (Ages 2-3). Download the full schedule here.

 

  • For baseball fans, the Nationals have teamed up with the Washington Post to offer really fun events all weekend long, beginning on Friday.

    What better way to celebrate the end-of-summer than with baseball?

    But more specifically, Sunday Sept. 4 is Kids Day. $1 tickets will be available for the Nationals series finale against the Mets to children ages 3-12. Fans may buy up to four tickets for $1 each with the purchase of one full-priced adult ticket in select areas. Tickets can be purchased online or at the Box Office on game day and are subject to availability.  Also on Sunday, the Nationals erectile dysfunction will host the seventh annual Kids Run the Show Day, presented by The Washington Post. Children from across the DC Metropolitan Area were invited to enter the annual contest in The Washington Post and The Express to win the opportunity to “Run the Show.”

 

  • For a different twist on the long weekend, have a true DC “Staycation” and take advantage of the Hotel Monaco in Alexandria’s Family Summer Fun Package, starting at $179 , which features complimentary milk and cookies nightly as well as a free in-room movie for each night of stay. The package is available through September 11th, and can be booked using the FAMFUN rate code. In addition to offering a great summer package, the hotel also offers a multitude of complimentary perks targeted towards the under-16 set, including:
     
    ·         Dive-In Movie Night – Ahoy mates! The Monaco’s heated 40-foot indoor swimming pool is the best place for kids to spend a Saturday night. Each Saturday at 8:00 p.m., the hotel dims the lights, pulls out the inflatable pool furniture and shows great moves to splash and cheer to on a screen right by the pool.
     
    ·         Kids Hour –Kids command the living room for a whole hour every day from 4:00 – 5:00 p.m. at the Monaco Alexandria. With games such as Wii, Trivial Pursuit and coloring books, and fruit snacks, juice and freshly popped popcorn available to fuel kids for an evening with their parents.
     
    ·         Explore by bike…or wagon – Complimentary Phat Cycle bikes are available for adults and teens to use to explore the neighboring sights, whether it be a bike trip to Mount Vernon or a ride along the Potomac River. For those with little ones, take advantage of the hotel’s radio flyer wagons to stroll  through Old Town, which has tons of boutiques, galleries and restaurants to peruse.

The Kardashian Influence

Was all this extravagence really necessary?

People gripe that the Disney princesses are bad influences on our young girls…I think it’s people like Kim Kardashian, who was paid $12 million to get married, who are terrible influencers on girls. Check out my debut post on the super cool new site, The DC Moms, that’s up today!

#IreneDC Survival Guide for Parents

In keeping with the disaster and survival guide theme of the week, today I offer you my survival guide for battening down the hatches and surviving Hurricane Irene this weekend. We here in DC might not be in the eye of the storm but where I live, we are in the eye of Pepco’s storm. As a seasoned Pepco “weather event” victim, I’ve learned how best to survive that reality (I would prefer to not even say it outloud because I am that worried about being jinxy). I don’t rush the grocery stores, I don’t rush Home Depot, I won’t be lining up for sandbags.

Get ready, mateys

 Here’s what I do prior to storms:

1. For the kids, I head to Michaels and stock up on super fun project stuff. They don’t need to know the loot is there until things are getting desperate and it keeps everyone’s minds off why they can’t watch the Backyardigans.

2. Yo ho ho…for the adults, I  head to the liquor store. We don’t need food. It’ll just spoil. But swizzling a nice glass of vino..or two…..helps weather the storm.

I also tend to have some foresight. I really like coffee in the morning. In the event that I can’t brew a cup on Sunday morning, don’t think I won’t brew a cup on Saturday night before the storm picks up speed, so that I can at least have a cup of iced coffee on Sunday morning.  And seeing how Monday is the first day of Kindergarten for my critter, I will prob wash and blow dry her hair on Saturday night in the event that I can’t use a hair dryer on Sunday. Every gal needs to start Kindergarten with relatively clean and styled hair, right?

Now, don’t be fooled, kittens. I cannot stand what happens when bad weather strikes. I pace, I foam at the mouth, I make irrational demands about where service crews should be working no matter how hard the wind is whipping and thunder roaring. But the vino and art projects do help. And I have the next two days to find my inner-zen for the inevitable…..

Dial N for Neuroses

When naively considering all the ways motherhood might change me, as a first-time preggo, what I never considered were the random, and admittedly even obscure, neuroses that would crowd my mommy brain.  I’m not worried about quicksand sucking us all down or alien invasions on my trip to crazy town but shadowy lurking perpetrators are part of it…

Are your neurotic ideas in here?

So after my uber-long post on Monday, and after yesterday’s historic #earthquake (where I learned a few things about myself..more on that later) today I will offer you a rare glimpse into the mind of my genius, or I mean, my neuroses sponsored exclusively by motherhood. Prior to children, the closest I’d come to considering the likelihood of improbabilities happening to me was when watching an action adventure movie with a friend, we concluded we are slow and not real thin, therefore we’d be one of the first to die in a horror movie.

Neurotic Idea #1: Don’t think I am Susan Smith

I travel the Bay Bridge all the time – my parents live on the other side of it. This summer it was rated one of the scariest bridges in the world. So how does a gal not worry about what would happen if her vehicle goes careening off the edge of a bridge and hurling towards the water with both of her children in the backseat. Does this thought have me flirting with crazy? Or am I just thorough and well-prepared?  Again, I am no Susan Smith. I am not thinking about driving my kids off the side of the road or bridge and into a body of water..but in the realm of wost-case scenarios – what do you do if your car goes hurling off the side and plunging to the water? And it’s all the more complicated if you have more than one child…I have two…but what if I had three….how do you get them out and safely? Who do you go for first? What does that say about you as a mother if you are picking one before the other?  Somehow conversation over July 4 dinner with my siblings prompted me to confess, for the first time, this five-year long fear that has been haunting me. And I sucked them into my crazy – are you sucked in? My brother-in-law oddly knew that we all should travel with this device to help crack open the windows of the vehicle (I think we know what I will be giving everyone for Christmas). My sister later emailed me a link to this page offering a tutorial on what to do in the event your car plunges off a bridge into a body of water…..so now I am prepared. Aren’t we all so grateful for the Internet and its ability to feed     calm our fears… Don’t think I won’t enjoy knowing that I’ve sucked you in though….

Neurotic Idea #2: Shadowy Lurking Figures

This fear has lessened since I’ve added to my brood, and since they’ve grown bigger and louder and more argumentative, but especially in those first few months of motherhood, I was totally terrified that someone would steal my kid. Particularly in the middle of the night when I was fast asleep. Again, now that they are feisty and talk-back and argue, this fear keeps slipping away because  – do you really want them? But when the babes were small and helpless and mostly quiet and made cute cooing noises, this fear was very real for me. I’ve also stopped watching 10pm TV so I have fewer crazy and paranoid ideas.

Neurotic Reality #3: Acts of Nature

So in the midst of the historic earthquake, I realized I kinda suck in times of crisis. My younger one was napping upstairs. My older one sat on the sofa and stared at me, nervously asking me what in the world was happening and what do we do. Now, I wasn’t quite to the shoving old ladies out-of-the-way and shouting “SAVE YOURSELF” panic level, but I was a little freaked out, and quite slow on the uptake regarding what the hell to do. I really feel certain the earthquake lasted longer than 45 seconds or maybe all of my thoughts were working in super slow motion but it felt like an eternity. I was slow to move her to a door frame (how are we really supposed to know what the hell to do when we live on the east coast? Here’s where you could argue that paranoid parents should probably consider all worst-case scenarios instead of just talk about them….) And then I was caught up in the dilemma of what to do about my younger one. Again – the crazy bridge diving fear coming back in another form!  Did I dare go wake her to save her life unnecessarily and then risk she not nap all afternoon? Or do I leave her up there while I saved myself and my oldest by standing in a door frame? But what is riskier? Waking a sleeping 2-year-old or earthquake injuries? See how this quake had to be longer than 45 seconds?

I remained in the door frame with my eldest.

So when the ground under my feet and my children’s feet starts to buckle, I learned that I just might suck when the paranoia becomes reality…..

What are your paranoid ideas sponsored by motherhood? I know I can’t be alone.