websites, products, resources, and adventures for young families in Loudoun County and beyond

I know that even the most privileged moms can feel like their hands are tied when they’re sleep deprived, drowning in diapers, and learning to live on one income or two incomes minus childcare. In my personal journey to continue helping others — even with small children — I have learned a lot of lessons and experienced many false starts:

• Showing up to fix a meal at a shelter with a baby on your back can lead to whooping cough.
• Kids are not welcome in the Red Cross mobile donation vehicles.
• Ditching your partner and kids to volunteer may not lead to domestic bliss.
• While protesting during the first trimester, there will not always be a bathroom handy when you need to pee or throw up.
• Others may not be comfortable when you show up at community meeting with a fussy baby in arms and start to breastfeed.

There’s a great new group of Ashburn and Leesburg moms out there pondering how to make a positive impact on our community by helping other moms in need. This group is convinced that we moms can find a way to help each other, especially those moms who are facing bigger challenges than most. Come join us now while we are still defining our goals and figuring out how to make an impact right here in Loudoun County.

My family and I are preparing for the end of a ten year relationship with a well-loved station wagon. In replacing it we are saying goodbye to the vehicle that carried us through our twenties and are embracing a new type of family adventure vehicle for our thirties, which we hope will facilitate carpools, daycare field trips — 5 carseats (ack!) — and an evolved version of the road trips of past years.

Like many others out there, we are trying to do the impossible: minimize the price and fuel usage and maximize the passenger capacity and durability or the vehicle. We also want to make sure we have space inside for dogs and room on top for boats, skis and large pieces of furniture bought via craigslist. In a perfect world, maybe we could even find a way to not give up the all-wheel drive…. It goes without saying that we require a safe and dependable vehicle.

I googled and googled and couldn’t find a great online solution to appease our obsessive need to analyze and research without pressure from a salesperson. When I didn’t find what I wanted I went to the wise women of the local moms clubs and was given a list of useful websites. The one that seemed to be exactly what I could not find on my own was motherproof.com. It is an excellent resource for researching a mommy car that combines the raw numbers with readable narrative from actual moms.

I would still like to find a database or spreadsheet listing what carseat combinations fit in what vehicles…. if anyone knows of one I would appreciate a tip. Until I find one I would love to use the comments feature on this post to collect your impressive carseat combinations. Please include make, model, year, order of carseats, and any tips you have for fitting them in there.

I have tried not to worry too much about the frenzy regarding the dangers of plastic. I have a keep it simple, never microwave in plastic, store stuff in something else when able, use non-plastic for some of the kids’ drinks and rotate brands so you mix up the evil chemicals but don’t get sucked into worrying about it policy. Doesn’t sound so simple when I type in out!

I have enjoyed using the $1 Nuby Sippy cups. I like the solid colors and the fact that I don’t get cranky when we lose one — after all, they are much cheaper than a latte — however, I lifted my head out of the sand when I got an email today linking to a blog that appears to be pretty well-researched and decided it’s time to retire them.

It’s a shame that my first post needs to made under such circumstances, but we are experiencing some difficulties with our database after upgrading from WordPress 2.0.2 to 2.5.1 — not to mention switching to a much more polished theme — so you may notice many of the internal links are not working.

Please bear with us as I attempt to rectify the problem.

All better now.

My kids visited the Animal Ambassadors table at the Audubon Society’s Conservation Celebration at the Rust Nature Sanctuary last weekend. They are not squeamish children — I once ordered chocolate covered bugs for my son to try at his request — so they were happy to handle giant cockroaches and touch a millipede. In addition to these exotic animals, I was pleased to hear that Animal Ambassadors has plans to focus more on native species in the future.

I loved that the experiential educator (a mom!) staffing the booth actually let my two year-old hold an animal. The kids enjoyed checking their stuff out.

As a bonus, the schedule of upcoming shows on their website seems like a great place to start when looking for fun area events to explore on weekends

Active Family Services, LLC is proud to announce our new Loudoun Family Calendar. This is the resource I dreamed of when I new to the area, new to staying at home with my children, and new to mothering two children. I hope it will help other parents and childcare providers to easily find places & events to share with their favorite little ones on days when they feel the need to get out of the house and connect with others.
We make every effort to ensure that the information on our calendar is up to date and easy to use; however, we recommend that you double-check event details with the location. If you would like to suggest an addition to the calendar or notice an error, please contact us. As with our other informational services this calendar is made possible by our local sponsors. Thank you for your support!

Leesburg Farmer’s Market

Hours
9am-1pm according to the sign
8am-1pm according to the website
9am-12pm winter season (November-April)

The sign and website conflict, so you may need to wait a bit if you plan to arrive before 9am.

There’s not much I can say about the Leesburg Farmer’s Market that another local blogger has not already put into a lovely video on YouTube:

I do have a few tidbits to add, though. The location — Virginia Village Plaza near the intersection of Catoctin Circle and King Street — makes a trip to farmers’ market fit in well with breakfast at Deli South (whose breakfast burrito is better than their website!), the Saturday morning storytime at the temporary Rust library location, ice cream at the Razzle Dairy Bar, or a walk on the nearby W&OD trail. (Walk a few blocks on King Street towards downtown. If you turn right onto the trail you will come to a bridge and a little park with another bridge.)

The set-up in a parking lot may make it difficult if you are juggling lots of free range toddlers or have one of those two year olds who runs the other way when you call him or her to stay closer…. Consider yourself warned and plan accordingly!

It has come to my attention that I am not the only one who wishes we had a Trader Joe’s in Loudoun County. Apparently there is a grass roots effort to attract them to a new shopping center in Ashburn. Hooray! To join this effort all you need to do is fill out Trader Joe’s location request form.

You can fill out as you like, or complete is as the masses have suggested:

City: Ashburn
State: Virginia
Comments: Village Center at Belmont Greene

Active Family Services, LLC has been quoted in the Washington Post! I am tickled that our steam cleaning practices made the news.

This new blog, written by a local mom, is full of interviews of entrepreneurial women.