Did you know we have a fully equipped in-law suite in the basement? We do, and you can come stay with us!
The apartment has its own entrance, a full kitchen and bath, access to shared laundry and a yard/patio. Sleeps 4 adults comfortably in a double bed and living room futon. A portable crib (pack and play) or air-mattresses for children or extra adults are also available.
Location and Ammenities
Best part? Our place is unbelievably convenient to transit and DC attractions. Step outside and choose a blue or orange line metro train across the street, or bus stops that serve 7 different routes within a stone's throw of your accommodations. During peak hours, your public transit commute to the U.S. Capitol, the mall, and Smithsonian Museums is less than 10 minutes.
Our home is also walking distance to historic Eastern Market (7 blocks), the dozens of restaurants on Barracks Row, and two different grocery stores within 2 blocks. There's also a BikeShare station across the street should you wish to rent a bicycle for the day.
Maya came down the stairs this morning and declared: "Mom, you have to measure me to see if I'm really 5."
Photo by Siobhan Hanna Photography / All rights reserved
Nearly-five has already been amazing us this fall with improved attitude and independence.
Still an avid drawer and artist with a significant attention span for those activities, her artwork is detailed and story-oriented. And, oh my goodness, board games. A couple of months ago, Maya developed an interest in and attention span for board games that can often outlast her parents.
Now in PreK (in a mixed-age Montessori classroom), Maya is desperate to learn to read. She recently discovered the graphic novel and has been rapidly consuming the DC Public Library supply of them (we have to be a bit careful, because 5 is not the target demographic for many of these).
This time last year, Maya wore her Cinderella dress so much that she wore the sparkly lace layer right off it. Now, princesses have taken a back seat to spies, superheros, and other adventurers.
To her playmate on the way to the swimming pool Thursday afternoon:
"Want to pretend that you are 40? Cause that's really super old!"
And on the way back home because I obviously had not understood the question the first time:
"No, no. How did "dad's name" and "mom's name" make "child's name" be born. How did they do it?"
Luckily, my "That's a conversation for another time" response sufficed, because I'd really rather not educate someone else's 5 year old on that topic. Maya and her playmate subsequently decided that the playmate should go home and ask her parents, too.
After dinner while discussing why she can't wear her Crocs to school any more (The tread is gone and she slips in the halls) but she doesn't want to get rid of the old ones or remove her Hello Kitty decorations:
"Can't you and Dad just please decide that I can have a little sister. Everything would be so much better."
Like many mothers of girls, I've struggled with the rise of the princess culture. Until quite recently, we were all about princesses around here. Maya owns each of the tiny fashion dolls, a couple of the Barbie-sized dolls, Cinderella and Sleeping Beauty costumes, princess underwear and several items of bedtime-wear with princesses. And my impression is that we've been fairly conservative in princess acquisition (the majority of which is hand-me-down in origin). We could have purchased clothing, furniture, bedding, lunch boxes, toothpaste, shampoo . . . even grapes.
I don't remember owning much princess paraphernalia as a child. Sure, there were princesses, but there wasn't a Disney Princess marketing machine the way there is now. There was almost a blog post here titled "Not Really a Ball Kind of Girl" (though I did get all gussied up and attend one once) where I was going to reminisce about my Cinderella dress.
When I was a kid, there was a dress at my grandmother's house dubbed "the Cinderella dress" because it was old fashioned and twirled very satisfyingly. The thing about it is that it was clearly the scullery maid Cinderella dress - patched, faded, ragged in spots. While I have no doubt that I would have accepted a Disney-branded dress, I'm not sure they existed. Star Wars, on the other hand, had a marketing machine and features prominently in my memory of childhood toys and games.
According to the New York Times, Disney didn't begin marketing princesses independently until 2001. Andy Mooney, who worked for Nike before taking over the Disney Store princess line of merchandise explains:
We simply gave girls what they wanted, although I don’t think any of us grasped how much they wanted this. I wish I could sit here and take credit for having some grand scheme to develop this, but all we did was envision a little girl’s room and think about how she could live out the princess fantasy. The counsel we gave to licensees was: What type of bedding would a princess want to sleep in? What kind of alarm clock would a princess want to wake up to? What type of television would a princess like to see? It’s a rare case where you find a girl who has every aspect of her room bedecked in Princess, but if she ends up with three or four of these items, well, then you have a very healthy business.
Does the Pervasiveness of Princesses Harm Girls' Individuality?
For most princess objectors, it's not really the merchandising that's a problem (though, that is sometimes hard to take too), it's the messaging. But experts will tell you that the sheer volume princess appearances in a girls life, the pervasiveness of that message, IS a problem.
“Playing princess is not the issue,” argues Lyn Mikel Brown, an author, with Sharon Lamb, of “Packaging Girlhood: Rescuing Our Daughters From Marketers’ Schemes.” “The issue is 25,000 Princess products,” says Brown, a professor of education and human development at Colby College. “When one thing is so dominant, then it’s no longer a choice: it’s a mandate, cannibalizing all other forms of play. There’s the illusion of more choices out there for girls, but if you look around, you’ll see their choices are steadily narrowing.”
There are no studies proving that playing princess directly damages girls’ self-esteem or dampens other aspirations. On the other hand, there is evidence that young women who hold the most conventionally feminine beliefs — who avoid conflict and think they should be perpetually nice and pretty — are more likely to be depressed than others and less likely to use contraception. What’s more, the 23 percent decline in girls’ participation in sports and other vigorous activity between middle and high school has been linked to their sense that athletics is unfeminine.
That makes me wonder about the current state of politics and what's become known as The War on Women. What are the long-term implications of waiting for your prince to come as a preschooler?
Princesses Are Just A Small Part of Gender Inequality in Media
There are simply more boys than girls represented in media with male speaking roles outnumbering female roles 3 to 1 across G-, PG-, PG-13, and R-rated films.
Female characters are presented in a sexualized way 5 times more often than than male characters and are 3 times more likely to have an unrealistically "perfect" body.
Animated, G-rated programming presents the biggest imbalance, not a safe-haven for girl self image.
Girls are princess or nothing at all . . .
A Different Kind of Princess?
Not all the characters Disney categorizes as "princesses" have gotten the same merchandising as the 3 on the grapes above. Pocahontas's story was markedly different than the others, not culminating in a wedding, for example.
Maya has asked for a Pocahontas "deluxe set" (her name for the approximately 4 inch dolls with changeable plastic clothing) like the ones she has for Rapunzel and the others, but it doesn't exist. Did Disney just not think her Native American garb had the same play value?
Unfortunately, Brave appears to be targeted to an older audience than the pink princesses that dominate my house and the movie is decidedly too scary for a 5-year-old.
I have no idea what, if any, the long term ramifications of princess obsession will have. Perhaps none, because as abruptly as they took over my daughter's imagination, princesses have fallen out of favor.
We recently read Olivia and the Fairy Princess by Ian Falconer, in which the feisty young heroine pig grapples with some of these very issues, explaining to her mother that she liked princess just fine until everyone wanted to be one. Maya's favorite scene is when all her classmates dress as princesses for a Halloween party except Olivia, who comes as an undead warthog. My favorite part is how the book sparked conversation.
What's all the rage now? My Little Pony, and in particular, a character I don't remember from my generation of the toy: a very speedy, not-very-girly, very-not-pink Pegasus named Rainbow Dash (seen below in a video montage playing off the double rainbow internet meme.)
Apparently, now that I've made yoga my job, I need a new hobby. Last week, Maya and I treked out to the suburbs in rush hour traffic (OMG, people do this daily?) and came back with these.
Maya has been asking to play the violin for well over a year and we've been putting her off. I looked into it last fall, but was overwhelmed enough with her starting full-day school, ballet, and gymnastics while I attempted to turn teaching yoga into a living.
For ballet and gymnastics, parents simply sign up and then cajoledrag take our child to once-a-week lessons where we sit around with other parents and/or a book/laptop for 45 minutes and bask in the glow of an excited gymnast/ballerina afterward.
Preschooler instrumental music lessons on the other hand, at least Suzuki method style, are a high-parent-commitment endeavor. Parents don't have to play, but they do have to attend lessons, take notes, and guide daily practice. I've opted to join in with an instrument because I played as a child and I'm gambling that practice is less of a battle if I'm holding an instrument too, plus (as Mac pointed out), I've been looking for an excuse for years to pick up violin again.
I did pick it up yesterday and while my technique is certainly very rusty, I discovered that some of my decades-old Suzuki repertoire is still there as I played Lightly Row from memory. That's a good thing because we're spending the equivalent of a significant car repair to refurbish my grandfather's violin (the one in the photo is a loaner), so I'm pretty much committing to two years of lessons for me no matter what Maya does.
As I was getting off the phone the other evening, Maya asks:
M - "Mom, were you talking to SunTrust?"
J - "No, why do you think I'd be talking to SunTrust? Who's SunTrust?" (No one in the family has a SunTrust account.)
M - "They are the people you call when you need someone to help you solve your problems."
That, of course, immediately made sense. We've been hearing the same Pandora Internet Radio ad for weeks. Maya is quite effectively primed for the inevitable encounter 14 or so years from now with the SunTrust account rep selling credit cards in exchange for T-shirts in the student union.
Though she sees comparatively few advertisements, we've talked a little bit about them. There are ads every half dozen Pandora songs (wondering if paying for ad-free Pandora is worth it now), at then end of a few of the selections on Netflix, among the previews of some videos, and inserted into new toys. She knows ads are a company trying to sell her things, but her response is often "But I want to buy it!"
Yesterday evening:
M - "Mom! Mom! I can talk while I'm screaming."
J - "Oh, really."
M - In a high pitched squeal: "I LOVE YOU MOM!" Normal voice: "That was talking through screaming."
And We Visited The Enchanted Forest
School let out last week and we spent our first full day off at Clark's Elioak Farm near Ellicott City, MD. We got off to a slow start, arriving at the farm around 1 pm. They didn't quite have to kick us out at their 5pm closing time, but not by much.
I found the place thanks to a CertifiKid promotion. If you grew up near Baltimore and were the right age before 1988, this stuff might look familiar. Remembering the Enchanted Forest theme park from childhood visits with Mom Mom & Pop Pop, it was a no-brainer to take Maya to Clark Farm's Enchanted Forest where they are reconstructing the old features. Even without the coupon, the $5 entry price is reasonable. $2 to ride the pony, cow train, or hayride.
Maya had a blast. She RAN from feature to feature announcing every character she recognized. Her resolve that she wanted to ride the pony wavered once face-to-face with a real one, but she persevered and went back again to finally ride. Our final act of the day was to feed the sheep and goats (technically, my final act), and Maya declared that the best part.
Seeing a flickr photo error? Flickr reset all my static links one day when I changed a bunch of permissions. I'm gradually finding them all, but please feel free to send me a note if you find one.
