Why I love Fredrick, MD

The first time I ever ventured out to Fredrick, MD was six years ago when I did the now renamed, retooled Avon 3Day Walk for breast cancer. I remember not being able to believe how far from my place in Silver Spring it was and thinking - wow this is the suburbs. But it was a beautiful drive out there and we started the walk at, Hood College, was welcoming and tree filled.

Since then, I rarely needed to go to Fredrick for anything at all, until we moved to Gaithersburg last May. On my search for a good local organic marketing I found Common Market in Fredrick and realized that it was less than a half and hour from my new house. Common Market is a wonderful organic market that is two times the size of any place I have found in the DC metro area, with good prices and bulk food. Since then I have found myself up in Fredrick once a month or so to do a large shopping at the market.

So when I was looking for non-traditional baby stores in the area I was pleased to find there was one in Fredrick called Enkore Kids, a local family-owned baby store. When we first got to the outside of the store last night, I though I was going to be disappointed as it seemed very small with lots of items crammed in - the type of place I can usually spend five minutes in. However, we (my mom, Jason and I) were soon to be very surprised.

The woman behind the counter, Sue, intoduced herself to us and even after we had mentioned we were "just looking" asked if she could tell us a bit about the store. Over an hour later, she has helped us understand everything from baby carriers, to car seats (she is a certified baby car seat technician) to hints on how to deal with a new baby and your current dog. She was a amazing! An endless amount of quality information with the energy to match (and a promise to help us out more next time we visited). She never asked us to buy anything or made us feel like any of the questions I could get in between her good advice was too tiny a thing to know. She had tips on tricks on double layering the baby bed for easy night changes to handouts and websites where we could get the things we wanted cheaper. I think I learned more in that one hour that in the past four months of research I have done combined.

We were all exhasted, in a good way, after leaving the store and I can't wait to go back. We will definitly register for our car seat and some other quality items there, but even what we register on our own (like the Ergo Carrier I just added to our registry today) she said she will continue to help us on our quest through the thousands of websites and store that have been dumping information on us.

Fredrick, MD has truly been a wonderful find - I can't wait to explore what else it has for us!