This Weekend: a very GREEN kinda weekend.

A brief run-down of possibilities.  Gorgeous weather included!

Saturday April 30 is Arbor Day at the Morris Arboretum.  What a BEAUTIFUL time of year to go and celebrate.  Enjoy a treasure hunt starting all the way in the treetops in the "Out on  Limb" exhibit.  Interactive activities, a treasure map to follow, and completers get a seedling to take home!  Free with admission or membership.  1-3pm
Arbor Day Link

The 15th Annual Chestnut Hill Home and Garden Festival is Sunday May 1 from 11am to 5pm.  A perfect day to get your green on and enjoy amusement rides, face painting, balloon art, maypole dances, and a free kiddie train ride!  But that's just the kid-friendly stuff... you'll also find exhibits, vendors, outdoor dining, and plenty of things to do for the grownups tagging along.
CH Festival Link

Check out this previous post for a listing of two thrifty sales happening this weekend.  (and just in case you were wondering, this fits in with the "green" theme because you'll be recycling goods).

Consign on a dime...

Two local opportunities to turn clothing into cash and/or score some great deals on baby and kids clothing, gear, and accessories.

The first "hyperlocal" opportunity is this Saturday.  For a $10 donation, you can bring in your in-good-condition hand-me-downs, and take home as many items as you like. (All sizes & all seasons!)

The Spring Clothing Swap supports the scholarship fund of The Cooperative Nursery School, and all leftover clothing is donated to children's charities.

When: April 30, 2009
Where: 6503 Lincoln Dr.
Philadelphia, PA 19119
Time: 9am -1pm

Entrance to the Cooperative Nursery School is on Johnson St. via the Unitarian Society of
Germantown driveway.

And if you just made those HUGE piles from changing over seasonal clothes for the kids, if you act today, you have an opportunity to make some decent money (65-75% of the price YOU set) at the just4kidsconsignment sale starting on Friday.  You only have until Tuesday night at 9pm to electronically log your items in, and drop-off slots for consigners are on Wednesday.  If you aren't consigning, it's still a great sale to go to... lots of name brand clothing and gear... and it's HUGE!  Voted #1 Philly Consignment sale last fall.


April 29-May 1, 2011
55 E. Germantown Pk.
Friday 10-6
Saturday 10-6
Sunday 10-3
(many items 1/2 off on Sunday)

Monday Mix: The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian Book Review

The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie (Little Brown, $9.99)

I finally got a chance to sit down and read this book, which has been on my to-do list since it won the National Book Award, became one of the One Book, One Philadelphia choices, and was talked about in length on NPR with the wonderful Sherman Alexie. My favorite anecdote by Alexie during the interview was when he was talking about the many movie offers the book has had but how he won't do it unless they find a kid who can REALLY play basketball. He joked about not even caring if they were Indian, as long as they could play basketball right.

This book is definitely for young adults and older- there are some mature themes that might be too intense for some middle graders. Alexie's coming of age story of a high school boy named Junior (real name Arnold) from the Spokane reservation is both heart-wrenching and hilarious simultaenously. The comics drawn by Ellen Forney throughout the book are right on point. Simply put, life on the reservation is hard. Kids deal with alcoholism, poverty, and depression on a regular basis. When Junior decides on his own to attend a school outside of the reservation to get a better education he realizes how different his perspective is just by the amount of funerals he has attended in his young life. His white friends at his new school have barely lost any of their immediate and extended family. He has seen countless people close to him die. The balance of tragedy and humor is so solid. I was choked up with tears and smiling, finishing the book with countless sighs and silent prayers. I wish I had been able to read this book when I went to high school.

Taking on the princesses... any tips?

Ok, I know some people will tell me to enjoy it, others will tell me that it's no big deal, and others will tell me to wrap my daughter in a track suit and run for the hills.  Or at least the soccer field.  But she's only three.  And she doesn't want to play soccer.  Or basketball.  Or baseball.  Or anything that resembles a sport or that could be construed as "boyish".

Before you smugly assume that she is a product of her environment (with me being to blame), I can assure you, she isn't.  And, I guess, she is.  I am and always was a tomboy.  I cried when I had to wear a dress to my first day of kindergarten the same way she sobs if I say she can't wear her sequined dress-up outfit and sparkly shoes to the playground.  I didn't even wear a dress to my own wedding (a fact she learned a few weeks ago when she asked me where my wedding dress was... that conversation did NOT go over well).  I hung out with boys, played sports, and wore jeans to everything.  I still do.

She has an older sister who was briefly interested in Disney's first African-American princess, Princess Tiana, but only as a fleeting interest.  The same older sister now loves basketball and Harry Potter, Star Wars and Legos, climbing and running, and anything most boys her age would embrace.  She also likes to wear dresses, but only when the occasion calls for one, and would much rather trade in any glam outfit for running shoes.  She is not what people would call "a girly girl".  And yes, I know those very names (tomboy and girly-girl), impact our thinking about gender roles.

The little one also has 2 big brothers.  One is a pretty typical tween boy, and the other is just a year older than she is.  He used the same dress-up clothes 17 months before she could get her white gloved hands on them.  He wore a sparkly gown and shoes to his best friend's third birthday party.  He takes ballet and tells his mama he loves her about ten times per day.  But he's also Star Wars and Lego obsessed, wants so badly to pack heat (toy gun conversation will be a follow up to this princess post), and is a bundle of energy (if not always appropriately channeled).

So before you blame environment, that same environment has produced three other non-princess-obsessed children.  Until now.  Baby girl is O-B-S-E-S-S-E-D.  I think it all started with Fancy Nancy.  This seemed sweet and harmless to me.  Tales about a book character who likes a little fancy bling on just about everything.  My daughter took to these books the way some take to the bible.  She was a believer.  She wanted her room to be "more fancy".  We thought it was cute and might have even encouraged the idea by throwing her a Fancy Nancy themed birthday party.  But Fancy Nancy is a book, you say.  Books are good!  I thought so too.  Yet it's been a slippery slope from Fancy Nancy all the way down to those princesses.

Jasmine, Snow White, Mulan, Tiana, no idea, Cinderella, Pocohantas, Belle, no idea

My fancy girl arrived at her second year of preschool ready to hang with the big girls.  Well, the big girls?  They like princesses.  And not just any princesses.  Disney's princesses.  They have princess t-shirts and gowns and jewelry and stickers and lunch boxes and backpacks and most of all?  The have princess play scripts.  They PLAY princesses.  Princesses are social capital in the preschool world.  I know this isn't true everywhere, but man, it's true in a lot of places.  And unlike her other siblings, it's not princesses and sparkly stuff AND other stuff.  For her, it's really JUST princess stuff and sparkly stuff.  Nothing else really entices her interest, thoughts, or attention in quite the same way.  As Fancy Nancy would say, the rest of life seems "plain".

She stopped wearing jeans last fall.  Even the jeans with the sparkles or embroidery on them.  She said they were too stiff.  Ok, I let go of the jeans.  Then she enacted a "no pants" policy... the only exceptions being leggings (under sparkly dresses).  Yoga pants have "holes that are too big".  Sweatpants?  Well, you know better by now.  So we let her rotate her dresses, but even this was not enough.  She found an Ariel (Little Mermaid) dress-up someone gave us as a seemingly harmless hand-me-down.  She wore it for five days straight.. to bed, to school, to play.  It is a GOWN.  Foofy and gowny.  We finally had to hide it when she went to change her underwear.

Well you're probably thinking, buck up and fight the good fight... just say no!  Ok, but saying no takes at least an hour to do on the morning, is accompanied by genuinely heartbroken tears and horror, and doesn't end if you "win" and she's without a sparkly gown (or at least a dress with a LOT of twirl) for the day.  She will tell you all through the day about how she doesn't like what she's wearing, how it's not pretty, and how she just wants to go change.  How, if she could just wear the ice skating costume with all the sequins on it, she'd feel better.  And you realize that she really would feel better and you wonder why you don't let her change.

And yes, we talk endlessly about how pretty doesn't matter... it's who you are that matters.  And we walk the walk too (we all wear jeans).  But you know what?  Despite her love for all things pretty, she IS a good person.  She is kind, she is very concerned with how other people feel, she's funny and feisty and smart and happy... just a wonderful person.  But a person who needs her sparkles and sequins or she just doesn't feel right.  

We read books about Cinderella tales around the world.  Cinderellas who don't have gowns, who don't want princes, and who don't even... gasp!... wear glass slippers.  We read books about strong girls, powerful women, and boys who love princesses too.  I haven't actually read her Cinderella Ate My Daughter by Peggy Orenstein, but we've read any children's book that supports the theme.  I don't feel like I have to clobber her with "it's who you are" that matters, because I think who she is is wonderful.  If she were an evil step-sister wanting Cinderella gowns, then I'd really be worried.

But the Disney marketing for such young children is appalling to me.  I wasn't AS appalled when her big brother embraced the Cars dynsasty because it just wasn't the same... it wasn't who he wanted to BE.  He just wanted lots of junk with Cars pictures on it.  And yes, we could ban Disney from our house, and I am sure many of you have done just that.  But it seems as though she is hard-wired for glitter the same way I was hard wired for Levis, and she can get her princess fix out in the world even if I forbid it.  We have very few (like less than 10) Disney princess things in our house, but she asks for more whenever we're out.  We've decided to try to feed the need for dresses and glitter and glam without feeding the Disney empire.  But we also know that she is three.  And right now, she just loves this stuff.  And we love her.  All of her.  Even the Disney parts.  So for now, we offer the frills and try and keep the monster fed without letting it swallow us all up. And we snap pictures and hope for a happy ending.

This Weekend... Get SMART! (Subjects covered: history, science, reading)

Saturday will be a great day indeed!  The Johnson House will be part of “A Great Day on the Great Road”.  This is an annual community festival in Vernon Park and Historic Germantown, a collaborative of 15 historic and cultural landmark sites.  Look for family oriented activities, music, reenactments, food, games, and crafts.  Germantown High drumline will perform.  1-4pm.
http://www.freedomsbackyard.com/pdf/Great_Day_Flyer2011.pdf

Kick off the 13 day Philadelphia Science Festival with a Science Carnival on the Ben Franklin Parkway.  More than 80 exhibitors offering non-stop family-friendly experiments, interactive activities, games, and a packed line-up of live entertainment. Enjoy liquid nitrogen ice cream, make gak, meet live zoo animals, check out the inner-workings of robots, take a tour of a helicopter, extract DNA from a strawberry, test a “crime scene” for forensic evidence, and so much more!  Saturday 10am-5pm.  If you miss this event, don't worry... there are a SLEW of other science events during the festival.
http://www.philasciencefestival.org/events/2011/04/science-carnival-ben-franklin-parkway#map

And the parkway will also be buzzing with the Philadelphia Book Festival Street Fair with more than 90 Authors and Literary Exhibitors. This is a free, open-air event held at the Parkway Central Library on Philadelphia's Benjamin Franklin Parkway on Saturday from 10:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m.  Interactive exhibits, family-friendly events, and programming on multiple outdoor stages. Buy books, discover new authors, and connect with the literary community, while you enjoy music, food, and fun at our fifth annual Festival Street Fair!
http://libwww.freelibrary.org/bookfestival/program_exhibitors.cfm

School Decisions?

If you live and raise kids in the GAP area, you're likely to grapple with school decisions.  Whether you're deciding between your neighborhood public school, a charter school, thinking of applying to an out-of-catchment school, or going with an independent school... it's nice to have choices, but it can get overwhelming pretty quickly.  This Thursday at The Little Treehouse at 5:30pm, Len Lipkin of PhillySchoolSearch will be helping families in the NW sift through elementary school choices. Cost is free with paid admission for children, and admission is free if dinner is purchased.
http://phillyschoolsearch.com/2011/04/11/picking-an-elementary-school-nw-philly-parent-meetup-414/

Yummy. Rhymes with Mummy.

While it may not be the gorgeous mid-summer weather we had yesterday, today will be even better.  Why?  Because it's free ice cream day.  Yep.  You read it right.  FREE.  And not just anywhere, but at Ben & Jerry's.  So ditch the diet and use the money you save on gas to drive and get yourself a good cone.  Did I mention it's free? 12-8pm.  All locations.  But where, you ask, are the closest scoop shops to the GAP area?  University City or 30th Street station:
http://www.benjerry.com/scoop-shops/feature/free-cone-day/

But if you want something closer, far more fun, and educational with no long lines, you can get your science on at the Chestnut Hill branch of the Library.  Tuesday's expedition at 4pm is CSI Egypt!  This presentation will look at the famous discovery of King Tut's tomb, as well as the speaker's own field work to demonstrate how careful archaeological detective work slowly builds us a picture of ancient Egypt, often one small clue at a time. The Outreach Lecture Program is funded by the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania and sponsored by the University of Pennsylvania's Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology. And?  FREE.

Speaking of libraries, Wednesday evening is Chess for all ages at 7pm at the Lovett Branch.  You guessed it.  Also FREE.

Two Local Benefits for Children with Autism

Proceeds from both events go to Fight Autism Now Supporters (FANS).  FANS is dedicated to providing structured social skills and therapeutic programs in a supportive and 

nurturing environment for children on the autism spectrum.

http://www.fightautismnowsupporters.org/aboutus.html

ART FOR AUTISM SHOW & BENEFIT @ St. Peter’s Nursery School

Tuesday, April 12^th 6:00-8:00pm

Raffles for Phillies tickets, Restaurant Certificates and Beauty Salons

Help us complete our 20 foot “Ribbon of Hope” by purchasing a giant puzzle piece

All money will be donated to FANS to support our summer camp.

BENEFIT FOR CHILDREN WITH AUTISM @ TOTARO’S

Thursday, April 28^th 6:00-8:00pm

10% of all food and beverage purchases will be donated to FANS.

50/50 Raffle

Meet Former Eagle’s cheerleader, Trish McNew, who will be the bartender!

Totaro’s is located at 729 E. Hector Street in Conshohocken

http://www.totaros.com/

This Weekend... the arts have it!

Chestnut Hill College music students will be performing "Once Upon a Mattress".  This Princess and the Pea musical runs on Friday, April 8, 2011 at 8 p.m., Saturday, April 9 at 8 p.m., and Sunday, April 10 at 2 p.m. in the College Auditorium.  $10 adult tickets, $5 for children and $3 for students.
http://www.chc.edu/News/2011/April/College_Music_Department_Presents_Once_Upon_a_Mattress/

Tickets still remain for this weekend's Treehouse Rocks! concert.  6pm on Saturday night with Meg's Melodies.  A singer-songwriter, she's known for charming audiences with the personalization and interactive nature of her songs.  Tickets for kids are $15 and include a meal.  Adult admission is just $5.
http://www.treehouseplaycafe.com/

Hopefully, you caught the longer post here about the Mt. Airy Kids Literary Festival going on at the Big Blue Marble all weekend.  Tons of fun to be had, authors to meet, and books to enjoy.  Check it out!
http://www.bigbluemarblebooks.com/kidslit11.html

Petrushka is playing at the Annenberg Center downtown:
"Known the world over for his astonishingly innovative puppet shows, master puppeteer Basil Twist makes his Philadelphia debut withPetrushka and breathes new magic into the legendary 1911 Ballets Russes production. Delight your eyes and ears as puppets fly, dance and float in midair and tell the tale of the tragic love triangle between three magical puppets whose stories emerge amidst the swirl of the Russian carnival. Russian identical twin pianists, Julia and Irina Elkina, perform a special two piano version of Stravinsky’s masterpiece and nine hidden puppeteers combine Czech and Japanese puppetry traditions in a tour-de-force of puppetry technique. It’s a true spectacle of wonder and fantasy perfect for adults and children alike!"
I've heard it's well worth the trip, and using the code FUNSAVERS, you can get $10 tickets for several performances:
Friday, April 8 @ 8 pm 
Tuesday, April 12 @ 7:30 pm 
Wednesday, April 13 @ 7:30 pm 
Thursday, April 14 @ 7:30 pm 
 http://www.annenbergcenter.org/tickets/?id=124

Petrushka is only one of the amazing events happening as part of the Philadelphia International Children's Festival.  From music, theater, and dance to a fun zone with face-painting or a show with John Lithgow.... you'll find plenty to keep the kiddies engaged and maybe even amazed:
http://www.annenbergcenter.org/tickets/childfest.php

And last in the line up, but first in beauty, the Morris Arboretum celebrates the Japanese Cherry Blossom Festival with a variety of activities on Saturday. The events are for both children and adults, and will celebrate the art, culture and gardens inspired by the 35 varieties of cherry trees that grace the Arboretum with their blossoms each spring.
http://www.business-services.upenn.edu/arboretum/events_JapaneseCherryBlossom.shtml

Mt. Airy Kids' Literary Festival starts Thursday!

Grab your favorite kids and make sure to visit the Big Blue Marble Bookstore later this week for the Mt. Airy Kids' Literary Festival.  The festival will run through the weekend and host over 15 authors and book signings, storytelling, read alouds, music, cooking, crafts and door prizes!  Books for young children through young adults will be featured.  So many great books and authors to choose from!

Some teasers:

Friday 6:45 pm: Local storyteller and musician Yomi Awodesu provides interactive African music and storytelling for children. 

Saturday 10am: Cooking Demo with Gabrielle Kaplan-Meyer, author/educator of Kitchen Classroom.

Saturday at 1:00pm - Reading with Artie Bennett, author of The Butt Book. (Yes, THAT butt!)

Saturday at 2:00pm - Reading with Ann-Elizabeth Barnes, author of A Free Woman on God's Earth. The story of Elizabeth "Mumbet" Freeman, enslaved African woman who had the courage and conviction to speak what was in her heart, suing for her freedom in a Massachusetts court of law. 

Sunday 2:00pm- Panel of author/editor/publishers from Tiny Satchel Press. 

That is just a SMALL sampling... for the complete listing of activities, authors, and events, check out:

http://www.bigbluemarblebooks.com/kidslit11.html

Monday Mix: To Market, To Market Book Review

To Market, To Market by Nikki McClure (Abrams Books for Young Readers, $17.95)

I will admit right away that the entire Big Blue Marble Bookstore are big fans of artist/author Nikki McClure. She's a self-taught artist and mama, interested in capturing the beauty in motherhood, the changing of the seasons, and living a sustainable and simple life. She works with an X-acto knife, creating intricate paper cuts. Her newest picture book is a gorgeous tribute to visiting the Olympia, Washington farmer's market every week. Her family's market list becomes a list of stories of gratitude to each person responsible for their basket of goodies- from the farmers who grow the dark green kale to the man who smokes salmon bought directly from local fishers to the artisan Yukie, who uses the indigo plant and wax to dye and then batik beautiful cloth napkins.

This book details what each person does to produce what ends up in your household. It's such an inspiring story to read and really contemplate what it takes to support a community, and almost depressing to read when you think of how little thought goes into these mass-produced and highly processed food products we take home every day. It's hard to buy all locally grown food and products when you're just trying to get by financially, but this book truly inspired me again to support my neighbors and embrace Philadelphia as much as we sustainably can.