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

The Leesburg/ Ashburn Stay at Home Moms Meetup Group is fantastic. I have connected with wonderful mothers who I admire in all of the groups I have joined over the years, but never before did I see so many in the same group sharing with and supporting each other. There are moms of all ages and all parenting styles in this group and the group has a great energy…. active, friendly, and easy to jump into. Kudos to the dedicated (volunteer) organizer and the many active members and assistant organizers for all they have done and continue to do to keep this group’s momentum. I am so glad to have found you!

Meetup.com is a great resource.

If you are new to motherhood or just getting settled in a new neighborhood it is worth searching for groups in your area. Meetup is not just for moms… so if you are looking to connect with other aspects of your identity you may even find a non-mommy group.

If you already have a moms group and are looking for a way to infuse some new energy and use an existing internet resource to simplify the coordinating of details, tracking of RSVPs, and allow for folks who cannot make events due to work schedules, naptime, etc. to connect virtually without inbox clutter, meetup.com may be to tool for you. The message boards are simpler than most online forums, and you can set them so they are seen only by group members. At first glance, the cost to start a group looks steep, but if you succeed in getting folks to join you may be able to collect dues to offset the cost.

First, a note to friends and family: read nothing into this. Our life is full with two at the moment. We are still catching up on years of sleep deprivation. We are not pregnant!

Now that that’s over with… I have met a lot of beautiful three kid families lately. Awesome kids, stellar moms, great dynamics, etc. I just cannot imagine any of these families without the third kid in the same way that I cannot imagine my kids without each other or my life without either of them.  Every time I see a mom of three or more I am struck by how comfortable they are with the littlest. A part of me would love to take all I have learned since my blind jump into parenting and do it again with the confidence, experience, and maturity I have gained. The rest of me knows that every time I get a little cocky the next parenting challenge comes up to bite me in the behind and leave me humble for a while.

I have also watched the generation before me scramble to care for their aging parents over the past few years, and am starting to think that my Peter and I may be too much of a handful for our two kids when we hit old age. This is a dangerous argument though… as the conclusion is that  we need a dozen or so kids.

Anyway, during one of those moments I stumbled upon Havingthreekids.com (with a tagline of “A site for those who have three, want three, or fear three”) and actually laughed out loud while reading the first column posted by Jennifer Eyre White. In addition to the columns, her site offers a community forum and links to blogs and other resources.

GreenerLoudoun is a blog for all you local folks interested in greening your lives. It covers a wide range of topics — from information on reuse and recycling, to how our choices affect local wildlife, to educational events suitable for children. The blog is interspersed with fascinating photographs, as well.  Have a look!

You’ll find this series on our community calendar. My fondest memories of our first summer in Leesburg were moments filled with music on these Saturday nights. The concerts are always family friendly, and children often gather to dance and frolic near the stage. The concerts are free so you can spend your money on gelato and/or iced coffee drinks at Market Street Coffee.

We had lots of fun making kick-the-can ice cream at the Rust Nature Sanctuary’s spring Eco Fair a few months ago, and finally drank enough mediocre coffee for a repeat performance at Playschool. I found recipes and instructions at Kaboose.com and dairyspot.com and then co-mingled and finessed them to work with the contents of my refrigerator. The result was definitely worth the two months of reduced quality coffee!

Afterward, we wanted to do it again (and again and again) so I requested large coffee cans on freecycle and found out that very few folks are getting their coffee in large cans around here. In addition to the fact that we live in a fairly well to do county where many folks can afford better coffee, many brands have switched their bulk packaging to plastic. I wiggled my way out of that conundrum by hoofing it to REI in Fairfax to buy The Mega Ball, a plastic contraption designed to replace the coffee can.

The verdict in our unscientific, one run vs one run test is that kick the can ice cream kicks the mega ball’s butt!

Kick the Can Ice Cream tricks and observations:
I bought all the ingredients but the ice at the store. As luck would have it the bulk of the ice cubes in our freezer were made of coffee or contained mint leaves or tang, but we used them anyway.This made the whole production give off a heavenly scent. Our coffee can started to leak coffee ice cubes right away so we covered it with a trash compactor bag. It was still leaking so we covered it with a towel. The towel made it soft which made it safer to send down the slide and push in the swing at the playground. That made us happy. Very happy.  I think the towel also insulated the can a bit and wonder if that helped the ice cream along? Our outer can lid was shredded when we opened the bundle up, and that made it a one use thing — which made us sad given that large coffee cans appear to be headed towards extinction. Our inner can was intact which was quite a relief since a hole would have meant salty (coffee-mint-fake-orange-flavored) ice cream. Our ice cream was the consistency of soft serve and we (6 experienced tasters aged 1 to 30) liked it a lot.

Mega Ball tricks and observations:
The Mega Ball was simpler, but I missed the journey. We didn’t need to wrap it in a towel so it was too hard to safely launch down the slide. The mega ball is one of those funny shaped things that takes a long time to dry on my counter. I like the idea of the Mega Ball and will continue making my kids earn their ice cream with it this summer, but will switch back to kick-the-can after two more months of coffee drinking.

My breast-fed daughter was extremely sensitive to dairy as an infant. It presented at around 6 weeks — in the middle of our cross-country move — as extreme fussiness and obvious tummy pain. It finally went away, for the most part, within a week or two once I completely cut dairy out of my diet. This meant reading labels and watching not just for milk, but also for milk proteins. Since then I have come across many moms more savvy than I was at the time asking for helping in living dairy-free. In response I have typed up a cryptic ramble on how I survived. I am sharing our experience here, but it is up to you and the experts in your babies’ lives to decide if you need to cut dairy out of your diet.

I was milk-free for eight months while nursing then slowly added milk products back to my own diet. By about 15 months my little one started on occasional milk products. By two she was a champion cow milk drinker. The dairy-free diet was pretty easy once we got used to it, and was totally worth it for us. My little one went from a gassy, colicky, unhappy creature (with a very cranky mom) to a sweet little baby (with a much happier mom) in a matter of weeks.

Based on my own unscientific research — lots of reading and talking to folks — it is my (completely unprofessional) understanding that dairy sensitivities are often misdiagnosed as reflux and unnecessarily medicated. At my own pediatrician’s office every doctor I saw gave me different advice. Much of it was conflicting, and one doctor even suggested that I stop breastfeeding and use the really expensive formula made for kids with dairy issues. I never got a clear professional diagnosis, but I know the changes I saw in my baby.

Tricks for dairy-free living

• Read labels. Even things like bread, instant oatmeal, frozen meatballs and cereal bars often have milk protein hidden in there, and we found that if we let any dairy sneak in we did not see the results.
• You need to get fat from other places. In my case, and probably in a toddler’s case a lot of every day fat comes from milk products. I needed to add in lots of nuts (cashews, cashew butter, almond butter, sunflower butter are alternative to peanut butter) and olive oil to make up for lost fat & protein and avoid cravings.
• It is harder to stick to it when there’s “regular” food around. I put my whole family on a no or low dairy diet along with us.
• Bring your own food on any outing.
• Go to a “crunchy” website and look up vegan recipes. You can always add the meat back in.

Staples and products we relied on (and where we found them)

• Soy milk — The Kirkland brand at Costco is pretty good & most little kids love it. Mine like it too much so I water it down. It also comes in little single boxes at Trader Joes. If you have concerns about too much soy consider oat milk, hazelnut milk, almond milk, or rice milk.
• Fake cheese — Most cheese substitutes suck when you first cut cheese out of your diet but you get used to them. We liked the Trader Joe’s selection best because they had both shredded and singles which were easy to manage.
• Soy yogurt — Target has the “silk brand” and the vanilla flavor is so sweet is tastes like pudding. Trader Joe’s carries their own brand, and it has a re-useable lid (silk just has a foil lid). If you like the big containers, you need to go all the way to Whole Foods.
• Tofutti Better Than Cream Cheese — This is carried by the health food store in market station, Giant, Wegmans (I think) and Trader Joe’s. Watch out though - it is like 100% evil partially hydrogenated oils.
• Tofu (as ricotta substitute) — We used the food processor to blend tofu, sun-dried tomatoes, olives, and olive oil for a yummy vegan lasagna filling. We never stopped making lasagna this way. It is really good.
• Costco Potstickers — A lot of prepared food has milk products in it, but at Costco you can get Potstickers in the freezer section that are dairy free. Trader Joe’s has lots of dairy free stuff, and great labels.
• Veggie Booty — They’re like green cheetos. For Goodness Sake, the health food store in Market Station, has it.
• Coconut milk — It’s a good substitute for making things like cream of tomato soup.
• Vegan cookies — Both the health food stores in Leesburg have them
• Trader Joe’s Cats Cookies
• Tofutti Cuties — They’re like ice cream sandwiches
• Homemade smoothie popsicles — Just pour smoothie into popsicle molds and eat them instead of ice cream
• Dried fruit

Eating out is hard, but a lot of Asian food is dairy-free. Thai, Chinese, and Japanese restaurants are good places to eat out. We also tried and enjoyed Z-pizza in Leesburg after hearing that they can make your pizza with soy cheese on request.

Further Resources

• Kellymom
• La Leche League
• Loudoun Allergy Network — I blogged about it here

P.S. I was always ravenous while nursing and snacked a lot back then. I also craved junk food of all kinds while nursing, hence all the snack/ junk food on my list