Philadelphia Moms

Taste of Philadelphia

We're approaching one of my favorite times of year in Philadelphia: 4th of July.  Because where better to be than Philly on the nation's birthday?  They do it right here and have over a week of fun, free, family-friendly events to celebrate.

Sunoco's Welcome America begins tomorrow with a weekend-long event: Taste of Philadelphia.  Restaurants from all over the Philadelphiaarea will be at Penn's Landing selling delectable goodies for, rumor has it, no more than $5 a pop.  Taste of Philadelphia begins tomorrow, Friday, June 26th at 5pm and starts back up again Saturday and Sunday at 11a.m.  Admission is free, you just pay for whatever food you'd like!

In addition, Angie Stone is performing at Penn's Landing at 7:30p.m., Saturday, June 27th and there is a fireworks display following the concert.  Again, it's all free.  Do I expect it to be crowded?  Of course.  But at least those of us who live in Center City  don't have to sit in traffic trying to  get to  these events.

Also, next week brings a series of educational events for kids.  The "Go 4th and Learn" events (as well as the entire roster for Welcome America)  can be found here.

So get out there, people, and go ahead, don your red, white and blue!

Ted's Montana Grill

I know, I know, it's like I dropped off the face of the earth, right?  Sorry about that.  Life, it just gets in the way of all this blogging. 

One of the places we've dared venture with a toddler recently:  Ted's Montana Grill, located at Spruce and Broad Streets  And yes, that's as in, Ted Turner, media mogul and environmentalist (you can read about some of the steps Ted's takes to be eco-friendly here).  Clearly, this is not the place for vegetarians, but if you're a meat-eater, this ain't bad. 

At any rate, we wound up at Ted's by accident almost: the restaurant we were planning to go to had a 45 minute wait and someone was having a complete meltdown that he wasn't getting his promised "humburger" immediately.  So...off to Ted's we went, having no idea what to expect, but we were pleasantly surprised.  Access with a stroller was easy and they have room to store a stroller (helping matters is that the restaurant was not overly-crowded).  The restaurante supplies high chairs--clean high chairs--and they have a kid's menu with 5-6 items on it, including mini-sliders, pot roast and mac-n-cheese.

To boot, they also have these very interesting kid's toys.  Unlike most restaurants that hand out crayons, Ted's has these unique twisty sticks (somewhat similar to a pipe cleaner) and diagrams on how to bend the sticks into different shapes. Probably not ideal to give to a baby, but my son is tactile enough that he enjoyed trying to make some simple shapes. 

The food is good--the burgers are ginormous.  Actually, everything might be a little on the large side.  We got a side of onion rings too, and they were like a small mountain o' onion.

Service, it seems, is a little hit or miss.  Everyone was very nice.  The manager went out of his way to get the stroller stored for us, get us the kid's toy, make sure my son's food came out first.  But there were mistakes on the meal orders.  Nothing major, but it seemed a little disorganized. 

Overall, though, I'll take it.  Another baby/kid friendly restaurant in the city?  Yeah, I'll definitely take it.

Main Line Mama: Post Natal Yoga

I love playing with my baby girl, but after about a dozen rounds of peek-a-boo things can get a little boring. Right now she’s mostly laying on her back and cooing so I don’t think she’s ready for a trip to the Please Touch Museum, but I’m always looking for new things to do and places to take her.

One of my favorite outings has become the PostNatal yoga class at the Yoga Life Institute in Wayne. The class focuses on strengthening your core, hips and lower back, three areas that really need work post pregnancy. While moving into our poses our babies lay on the floor in front of us, cooing and giggling at each other and their silly Mommies. My daughter cracks up when I do sun salutations over her.

I’ve learned a few poses from class and now I do them at home when she’s had her fill of peek-of-boo. I love that I’m doing something good for my body, and entertaining my baby at the same time. The class is also a great way to meet other new mommies, and my daughter loves looking at all the babies.

Do you have a favorite outing that you do with your child?