Arlington Fire Stations Open House!

Open House: Visit your local fire station!

All Arlington County fire stations will be open to the public Saturday, Oct. 11, from 10 - 4 in celebration of Fire Prevention Week. Bring the kids, climb into a fire truck, learn about fire safety, and more! Find your neighborhood fire station.

Enjoy!

Review of the National Aquarium in Baltimore

This weekend we trekked up to Baltimore to visit the National Aquarium with our almost 3 year old and 15 month old. We had a wonderful, amazing time, and I highly recommend visiting. The building is beautiful, and well laid-out. Everything is extremely kid-friendly, even for very wee ones. Glass walls all the way to the floor enclose many of the tanks, and the smaller exhibits all have a convenient ledge running along the wall in front of them that let even our 15 month old see most everything on her own--a big plus for parents' backs!

COST:
Prices ranged from $21.95 ($12.95 for kids age 3-11) for admission to the aquarium only, up to $28.95 ($17.95) for admission to the aquarium, the dolphin show, and the "4D Immersion Theatre" show. We splurged (thanks, gramma and grampa!) on the whole shebang. Luckily, kids under 3 get in free!

TIMING:
Their website offers some helpful hints on when to visit and when to stay away. We were there by 11am on a winter Sunday of a non-holiday weekend, and although most of our visit we got to see everything quickly, by 2pm it was still getting a bit crowded. I wouldn't even want to try going in the summer or during school holidays; a weekday morning would probably be ideal.

WHAT TO SEE:
The dolphin show! Okay, so it's really the same corny dolphin show that you could see anywhere. But they are just so darn cute! Plus, it's indoors, so it was great fun for a winter afternoon, and the views of the dolphins--above and below the water--were spectacular.

The rainforest habitat, complete with birds and monkeys in addition to the fish and turtles, is fun and, um, toasty warm. So dress in layers.

The best part was the simple stuff--the open tanks with sting and manta rays, and one giant sea turtle gliding serenely by. The large shark tanks; I never knew that sharks were so bug-eyed when not in "attack" state. The many countless smaller tanks featuring thousands of varieties of fish and other sea, ocean, river, marsh, and swamp creatures. Really, it was all stunning.

WHAT TO AVOID:
The "4D Immersion Theatre" show. It ended up being about 15-20 minutes taken from the Planet Earth "Shallow Waters" episode. While I whole-heartedly endorse Planet Earth as the awesomest thing I've ever seen on television, since I'd already seen all the footage, this show was nothing new. The film is shown in 3D, with the special glasses and all. However (and correct me if I'm wrong on the science) but since it wasn't originally shot in 3D footage, the 3D-ness of the film was barely noticeable. What was noticeable was the "4D" part: without giving all the secrets away, let me just say that special effects involving water squirting, air blowing, and seats vibrating gave the kids in the audience plenty to scream about. While this might be a hit with your 8 year old, it definitely was not a hit with the little ones! So, be warned, this show's special effects are S-C-A-R-Y for kids under 8 or so. And I wasn't so impressed with them myself (how many times can water squirting your face still be considered amusing, really?)

FOOD:
We visited the cafe on the bottom floor, right outside the dolphin show, called Frog Cafe. We sampled their french fries, grilled chicken sandwich and mini cheese pizza. The fries, thick cut and seasoned, were simply outstanding. The grilled chicken was lackluster on a limp, un-toasted bun, and the mini pizza was overpowered by sauce, but was otherwise fine. All told it was fine for speedy food to shore up the waning energy of our toddlers, but there are so many other eating options in the harbor that I'd recommend waiting to eat until after you leave.

(We sprinted in the cold over to the Phillips Seafood Restaurant in the Harborplace Light Street pavillion; the wait there was a too-long 30 minutes, so we opted for crab cake, shrimp, and fish baskets at the Phillips Seafood Express, right next door. It was all cooked fresh, and ranged from $8 to $12 a basket. Delicious! Highly recommend the crab cake sandwich ($12).)

OTHER TIDBITS:
Strollers are not allowed! Somehow our trip planner missed this information on the website, so we arrived with a huge diaper bag and 2 umbrella strollers. We had to check the strollers at the entrance (for free, happily) and also left our coats. They have framed kid backpack carriers and soft front carriers for patron use, which was a nice touch. We opted to let our kids walk, and they did just fine.

Overall, we had a wonderful time, and I'm sure the kids will be talking about it for weeks to come!

Some Holiday Thoughts and Tidings, Part 1: The Gifts

It seems inevitable, really, that the joy of the holidays leads into the pondering of the tide of toys.

My kids were blessed this year with some really awesome gifts. My son experienced love at first sight when he saw his new Buzz Lightyear doll, which has literally not left his side in 4 days (he got it early). My daughter, only 14 months, has been playing--with rather more enthusiasm than skill--on her very own harmonica and recorder. Evidently sharing big brother's instruments was a plan doomed to failure from the start. And they will share a whole host of fabulous toy tools, Little People sets, and toy trucks.

In the shower this morning, I realized something about gift-giving. My parents and my sister did an excellent job at purchasing gifts that the kids would really like. Although my husband and I didn't buy any gifts for the kids, I feel this niggling feeling that I couldn't have been as gifted, if you'll pardon a pun, in gift-buying. I feel pretty sure that I would have bought them toys that I wanted them to have, such as all-cloth dolls like these Waldolf dolls, Lily Dolls, or Groovy Dolls. Or, perhaps a lovely wooden play kitchen, like those found at Warm Biscuit or even (*gasp*) Pottery Barn. Just looking at these ads makes me wish that this was the type of childhood I could give my children.

And, I have to admit, it felt really, really good to not "do" Christmas this year. Oh, we still backed cookies (and brownies and fudge and pound cake), and even managed to give most of the goodies away as gifts. And I still bought a few gifts, albeit extremely frugally. But I went into the season knowing that my husband and I weren't exchanging gifts and that we weren't buying the kids anything either. It was such a relief! No hours spent shopping! No trying to wrap presents in the hour free each evening after the kids are asleep! (And no attendant wrapping-paper guilt.)

I've always been a stressed-out giver of gifts. I just can't shake that voice that wonders, Is this what they wanted? Did I spend too much money? Not enough? Should I have given this instead? Maybe if I just try one more store...

And then I married a non-Christian, whose religious holidays revolve around getting the family together, eating a huge meal, and often giving to those less fortunate. (Except for that little matter of Kurban Bayramı, or the Silence of the Lambs, as my not-so-PC father likes to tease my husband.) Overall, like Christmas should be, no? So I think we'll enjoy our "gift-light" holidays for a while. It may not be for everyone, but it certainly gave me the extra time and energy to think about the real focus of the season. Cookies. Oh, wait, sorry, that slipped out in my post-holiday sugar buzz. I meant to type, love.

Fewer Mothers Prefer Full-time Work

In a recent study of the changing attitudes of mothers, the Pew Research Organization determined that fewer mothers prefer full-time work now (2007) than did in 1997:

Among working mothers with minor children (ages 17 and under), just one-in-five (21%) say full-time work is the ideal situation for them, down from the 32% who said this back in 1997, according to a new Pew Research Center survey. Fully six-in-ten (up from 48% in 1997) of today's working mothers say part-time work would be their ideal, and another one-in-five (19%) say she would prefer not working at all outside the home.

But, really, how is this surprising? My only surprise is that a third of mothers in 1997 thought that full-time work was their ideal situation. Frankly, I'm amazed that working full-time is ANYONE's ideal situation. Be honest: if money weren't a factor; if, say, you could get paid the same for working just 4 days a week, wouldn't you jump at the chance?

Personally, I think it's the main folly of American society that we expect that our workers spend 40 hours or more a week working. Why can't the standard be a 4 day work week? In my logical analysis, the money saved over the long term because we are (1) overall healthier and saner due to working less, (2) able to work longer because we aren't burned out and desperate to retire would more than make up for having to hire extra people to cover the one day's productivity lost. In fact, I'm not convinced that there would be all that much lost productivity: I think that a happier employee with a better quality of life is going to be more productive and focused in the time they are at work, knowing that they have every Friday off, or that they get to leave the office at 3:30 instead of 5.

Image courtesy of Gotham Gazette.

Happy Kids! (Or are they?)

The Associated Press and MTV conducted a poll of 1,280 people ages 13-24 and determined that kids love their parents. Okay, I over-simplify. But in response to the open-ended question, "What makes you happy?" the most common answer was their parents. What great news! Right?

Of course, what the AP article doesn't clearly state is that while 49% of teens said that their relationship with their family made them "very happy," a full 61% said that "listening to music" also made them "very happy." So, are they happier with music than their family?

Also glossed over is the statistic that 58% of those polled said that "the way things are in the world" made them either somewhat or very unhappy. Only 15% said they where somewhat or very happy with the state of the world. To me, that sounds like a lot of young adults who are dissatisfied with the world they soon will be inheriting...

One thing that is so frustrating with these types of polls is that they take a sampling (less than 1,300) of kids, ask them a bunch (100) of different questions and then someone somewhere along the line between the people conducting the research and the reporters reporting on it decides which "research" findings they want to publicize. And, folks, that's all we see--what someone else has decided is important. Now, as someone who works in education research, I fully understand that it's not always easy, possible, or even desirable to publish the full text of questions asked, how the responses are analyzed, or what conclusions can be drawn. But as a discerning consumer of information, this poll just leaves me wanting to know more. Who are these 1,280 kids? Are they truly a representative sample of kids across the U.S.? Good research practices would dictate that they are, but without more information, we just have to trust that this poll, and the news article written from it, is giving us the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.

As it happens, I know of a far superior research study into the true happiness of kids today that provides relevant, real-time data reporting personalized to your specific socio-economic, cultural, and geographic background: just ask them yourself. I hear that works wonders.




Graphic from: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070820/ap_on_re_us/youth_poll_happiness