Why so many salons in Silver Spring?

This is so helpful. I had no idea that Spring Valley wasn't conveniently located. Thanks for all this info.

Seems like we may want to focus our house search in Spring Valley, Chevy Chase DC and Cleveland Park. (Are those neighborhoods in the Capitol Hill area or is that something different?) I assume there are rentals in those neighborhoods ...

Can anyone tell me whether there are "preschool alternative" programs in DC? In NYC, there are these sort of fake preschool programs -- preschool lite -- that are often a great option for 2yos. I'd be happy with something like this for my little one.

FL mom: So glad you like it there.

I've heard the Capitol Hill area is terrific. My concern is that we'll need to find a place for kindergarten, too -- So perhaps I should target only neighborhoods with terrific public kindergartens. I don't suppose Capitol Hill has this, right?

Checking out greatschools.org right now ... Thx for the tip.

Many thanks, FL mom. My dh will be a fed employee, too. I didn't know that Bright Horizons was option -- and that it had preschool programs. (I thought it was just day care.) That's definitely something I will look at. (It may be a decent option for my 2yo dd.)

Another question -- Do you like DC?

Many thanks.

I'll take whatever I can get, obviously. But ideally I'd like full days for my 4yo and just a few days a week half-days for my little one.

Either in DC or MD.

Thanks, everyone. To clarify -- we want a preschool for the fall, not for the spring. (We're going to finish the school year here.) And we plan on staying in DC for two years.

The poster who moved to DC from FL -- Can you point me to any resources that helped you with your move? Am curious if there's some kind of one-stop resource out there for families with kids relocating to DC.

It's hard to figure out where to live when I don't know anything about the schools there. Is a google search the best way to figure out where the preschools are? So overwhelmed.

We prefer a non-religious school. I'd prefer to have both kids in the same program. Full day would be preferable for the 4yo, but I'll take what we can get. I'd prefer to be in the city, but I understand that a lot of this may be easier if we were in the burbs. Basically, our options are open here -- and this is all happening very quickly, and we don't know much about DC at all.

Ask me anything about NYC preschools, and I promise I wouldn't sound nearly so clueless as I do about DC ones.

We might be moving to DC this spring from NYC and won't know for sure for several weeks, at the earliest. Our girls are 4yo and 2yo, and I'm really concerned about finding a preschool for them.

Because we don't even know if we're moving or not, we don't know yet which part of the DC area we would be moving to.

Any tips or advice or words of wisdom for a very anxious mom? Are there certain neighborhoods that are better than others for late preschool admissions? Are we in big trouble?

Thanks in advance.