This month marks our first issue under our new name — PDX Parent — and to celebrate what we think is a home run, local photographer Sung Kokko hung out with the fierce girls of the North Portland Little League tee-ball squad, the Grand Central Baking Grand Slams. Her great work is featured on this month’s cover, while inside, you’ll find our guide to taking the kids to root, root, root for the home-team, be it Timbers, Thorns, Blazers, Winterhawks or Hops.
Also in this month’s issue, read how three local writers tackled our Get Outside challenge to spend an hour outside with their kids each day for a week. Plus you’ll find a great crafts project from our friends at SCRAP, practical advice on keeping child care costs down from our Balance Sheet columnists and more.
Contents
Play Room
Speech-therapy questions, asked and answered, plus the best shoes for new walkers and meet our first-ever kid to know.
Play Ball
Be it Blazers, Timbers, Thorns, Winterhawks or Hops, we’ve got your game-day game plan.
Get Out
Three writers. Six kids under the age of 6. One week to head outdoors for at least one hour a day. And … GO!
Balance Sheet
Crunching the numbers on child care costs in PDX.
Moving To
From old school in Northeast to brand new in Southwest.
Field Trip
Checking out the treasures at the Ridgefield National Wildlife Refuge, indoors and out.
Baby Steps
Away from her kids for work, our columnist finds that everyone will survive — and that there’s no place like home.
Hands On
Be a “fun guy” and make this mushroom-inspired tool with your littles.
Family Supper
Getting the low-down on the scene at PDX’s newest brewpub.
Recipe File
A Thai omelet recipe for all the spring chickens out there.
Time Out
Earth Day celebrations, spring ballets and the Rose Festival gets underway.
Resources
Editor’s Note
As parents, we all know change is a constant. It happens slowly, and then all at once — the baby rolls over and holds a rattle, sleeps through the night and starts walking, speaks in full sentences and learns to write her name, starts preschool and makes his first friend. It can feel like these milestones will never come, and then suddenly, you look around, and they just did, and your child is hurtling toward the next, and you’re just trying to keep up.
And so it is with our magazine and uber-popular online events calendar, which this month debuts its new name and look: PDX Parent.
We’ve been working on this change for months, discussing and debating. We wanted a name that would reflect our fierce commitment to keeping things local. When you pick up PDX Parent, you’re reading the work of local editors, writers and photographers, not nationally syndicated stories that can be found in Anytown, U.S.A.’s parenting mag. Like you, we live here, we parent here, and we know how it really is, down in the trenches with the kids.
Our new name is also the final piece in blending together the magazine formerly known as Metro Parent and the online events calendar that two local moms, Alison Wilkinson and Tabitha Rhodes (now our web editor and director of social media and marketing, respectively) began in 2010 as PDX Kids Calendar. (Thousands of parents around the city have our calendar bookmarked — if you don’t yet, you should!)
We’re all under one umbrella now — check out our site at pdxparent.com or drop me an email at julia(at)pdxparent.com. We’re all here to help you celebrate and survive all the changes in life as your kids grow up, because as the saying goes, the days are long, but these years are short.
— Julia Silverman
On our cover:
Play Ball! In keeping with this month’s cover story on taking the kids to the ball game, ace local photographer Sung Kokko hung out in North Portland with the fierce ladies of the Grand Central Bakery Grand Slams. See more photos from the shoot here. Interested in signing your kiddo up for a team? Check out our NEW online youth sports league guide at pdxparent.com/frg/sports.
- Kids ❤️ Museums - October 3, 2024
- Experiment PDX - October 3, 2024
- Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art at PSU - October 2, 2024