Keira-anne.com

Always a fan of shopping locally, I was pleased to hear that my friend Amber recently started a business in Victoria catering to mamas and their newborns. Bonny Baby sews charming and cozy swaddling blankets to keep babies warm and moms happy.

Photo: © Bonny Baby Blankets

A two-sided combination of smooth quilting cotton and fuzzy flannel, Amber’s Bonny Baby blankets are both functional and entirely sweet. To accompany the blankets she has also created coordinated burping cloths. Featuring charming prints, Bonny Baby blankets are quickly becoming a hot commodity in the Victoria region.

Photos: © Bonny Baby Blankets

While you can purchase Bonny Baby blankets both on their website and at the uptown location of Lil’ Sweet Nancy’s in Saanich, Bonny Baby wants to give one reader three opportunities to win a swaddling blanket and matching burping cloth. Whether you’re expecting or you know of someone who is, a Bonny Baby blanket would make both a beautiful – and local – gift this Christmas season.

Here’s how to win…

1. Leave a comment below telling me who you would swaddle your Bonny Baby blanket with. (1 entry)

2. Visit Bonny Baby on Facebook and “like” them. (1 entry)

3. Follow Bonny Baby on Twitter and post the following: (1 entry)

I entered to win a @bonnybabyvic blanket from @keiraanne. RT and follow to enter! http://tinyurl.com/8yqlhqd

I will select one lucky winner at noon on Monday, December 19th! If you’d like to order a Bonny Baby blanket for yourself, you can e-mail Amber directly. Blankets are sold in pairs for $60 (including shipping within Canada). Burping cloths are sold for $16 per pair.

The contest is open to all residents of Canada. Winner cannot have won a prize on Keira-Anne.com within the last six months. Prize has no cash value and is non-transferable.

Erin and Melissa are two creatively crafty moms who, in an effort to create items for their children to wear and use, have stumbled upon some great ideas. Between sweet knit toques and highly functional stroller liners, LittleEvaCharlotte was born. Their designs are unique, customizable and entirely practical.

This is your chance to win any one item from LittleEvaCharlotte, just in time for the Christmas season. The winner will get to pick whichever item from the Etsy store they like most – and there are four easy ways to win. You can even enter in all four ways, ensuring four entries in the contest.

1. Visit LittleEvaCharlotte‘s Etsy store, come back to this site and leave a comment naming your favourite item in the online store.

2. Follow LittleEvaCharlotte on Twitter and Tweet about this contest including the hashtag #LECcontest.

3. Join the LittleEvaCharlotte group on Facebook and leave a comment on the group’s wall, linking back to this site.

4. Simple: write a quick blog post about LittleEvaCharlotte, naming your favourite item with a link back to the Etsy store.

You have until the end of this week to enter in one or all four ways. A random draw will take place next Saturday, December 12. Good luck!

This girl cracks me up – I can’t believe I’m lucky enough to be related to her.

Sometimes it’s still strange to see my baby brother with a baby of his own…

One day, boy meets girl. Boy falls in love with girl; girl falls in love with boy. All is blissful.

In this case, boy and girl get pregnant and on April 3, 2009, girl has baby girl.

I’m thrilled and elated and overjoyed to introduce you all to Sienna Lynn. She’s bright and alert, 7 lbs.-4 oz. and already the apple of her father’s eye.

It’s almost strange to me to hear the way my brother speaks about her. The same little bugger that terrorized me as a child with his fart jokes and cheeky talk-back is now calling his daughter “so beautiful” and can’t begin to fathom that he helped create this little girl.

He told me that he spoke to her every night before bed while she was still in the womb: “Hi, Sienna-bear… it’s your daddy,” he’d say. Yesterday, Trevor told me that he said the same thing to her as she laid by her mother and that she opened her eyes and looked towards him. It’s amazing to me.

I am beyond happy for my brother and Laura who will, no doubt, make fantastic parents. They will be moving back to Vancouver Island in June, and I can hardly wait to have them close to me again. A huge congratulations to them both – I am ecstatic about the expansion of what has always been a small, tight-knit family.

Welcome to the world, Sienna.

I’ve got babies on the brain, though don’t ask me why. Two nights ago I had a dream that I was 8 months pregnant and ready to pop. The father was someone from my very distant past, though I’m not sure how relevant that is. Last night I dreamt that I was the mother of a newborn baby boy. His skin was like porcelain, his temperament like a placid ocean. He was perfect.

Photo: Lab2112 on Flickr

It doesn’t take comprehensive investigative work to know that these dreams weren’t literal. I’m not pregnant, nor do I intend to be. I tend to check out Dream Moods anytime I have a dream with prominent symbols, but I already knew what the site would tell me about my “pregnancy” before I looked it up.

“To dream that you are pregnant symbolizes an aspect of yourself or some aspect of your personal life that is growing and developing. You may not be ready to talk about it or act on it. This may also represent the birth of a new idea, direction, project or goal.”

And what about the baby boy, you ask?

“To see a baby in your dream, signifies innocence, warmth and new beginnings. Babies symbolize something in your own inner nature that is pure, vulnerable, helpless and/or uncorrupted.”

Phewf!

I’m kind of addicted to that website, though I should caution you to take everything you compare on there with a grain of salt. However, I would have to agree that the suggestions provided are quite accurate in my own life.

Let’s get back to babies though, shall we? There’s a notion out there that, for most of us, our lives should all eventually converge on the same track: marriage, babies and a house in the suburbs. It’s what I always wanted and envisioned for myself when I was a young girl. In fact, much like Janet Livermore, I was sure I’d be married by 20 and have my first baby by 22.

I’ve always loved kids, loved working with kids, spent a year working with special needs childen (is that the most politically correct term being thrown around these days?), followed by two years of teaching preschool. I loved every minute of it and those were, at the time, the best years of my life.

That all came crashing down when I first moved to Vancouver and, under the impression that investing my time and effort into one family would be fulfilling, I accepted a job as a full-time nanny. I was wrong.

In a word: HELL.

While all three children appeared to be quite average in most aspects, the eldest was not. I endured five months of being degraded, name-called and verbally and emotionally abused… by a seven-year-old. I know what you may be thinking, but I cannot recall how many days I went home at 4pm and cried during the entire Skytrain ride back downtown.

Quitting that job was the easiest thing I have ever done. I may have even jumped and clicked my heels together while skipping off the front porch on the last day. And since then, I have never looked back in more ways than one.

That experience was only one of many in the last few years of my life that has re-shaped the way I perceive what society expects us to do. There are certain unspoken markers in life it is assumed we will hit, and the level of our success in life is marked by this gauge.

Photo: wacky stuff on Flickr

Sometimes I wonder if I am lacking certain maternal genes. While I love to cook and clean, maintain a household and generously perform other “wifely duties,” that is where my line has been drawn. Each day there are new photo albums and notes on Facebook of friends and family who are piecing together their own families. And while I feel a sense of joy at that which those people are accomplishing for themselves, the very thought of it for myself replaces that joy with a sense of dread and crashing waves of anxiety in the pit of my stomach.

What I’ve come to accept and understand, however, is that that’s okay. What is good for some may not be good for all. It’s not to say that I will never have the companionship of a marriage, and not to say that I will never have children, because it’s rather clear to me that I can never, ever anticipate what life will throw my way. I’ve learned to always expect the unexpected.

Today, this is where I’m at. It’s freeing to realize and understand that I can do whatever I want with my life. I don’t have to have children, and that doesn’t make me a less-than-whole person. Despite what we may be taught to think, there are many paths to finding a happy and fulfilled existence, and knowing that is all the encouragement I need to find a new path for myself.

Between Twitter and Flickr, my need of diary blogging on this site has seemingly become obsolete. While I haven’t felt much inspired to get deep lately, that’s no excuse to neglect you, o’ my readers.

Here’s a little of what I’ve been up to since arriving on Vancouver Island on Friday afternoon…

The mercury dropped as quickly as the snowflakes, so naturally Charley and I had to make use of our pending white Christmas. That little girl loves the snow, and if you don’t believe me, you should probably check out the video I posted.

With Christmas celebrations comes Christmas dinner, and with Christmas dinner comes Christmas dessert. My mom and I spent time on Sunday and Monday in the kitchen: she made her famous whipped shortbread; I made gingerbread shapes and Auntie Amy’s peanut butter cup cookies. And yes, they’re as good as they look!

A few weeks ago, I decided that it would be my Winter project to take up knitting. Mostly I want to be able to make a baby blanket for my soon-to-be-born niece (yes, they’re having a baby girl!), but I also thought it’d be fun to whip up some scarves for friends and for charity next Christmas.

Okay, so my tension sucks, but I’ve picked up the theory of the knit pretty quickly, and my mom’s BFF is bringing some perfectly-sized needles and fun royal purple wool for me on Christmas Day. The woman knits, weaves, cross-stitches, sews, quilts and who knows what else. She’ll have me knitting like a pro in no time!

After three days of cabin fever, my friend Rebecca came to my rescue in her boyfriend’s 4×4 and whisked me into downtown Courtenay.

London fogs, Christmas card shopping and finding some manicure implements were on our to-do list.

After our “date,” I met up with my mom for some McDonald’s for dinner. Tasty, I know.

Ugh, I gotta give myself a very, very thorough manicure tomorrow. After copious hand-washing while baking, my hands are in some serious need of TLC.

The snow is starting to come down again something fierce, so there’s nothing better to do than curl up with Charley and my fleece blanket and kick my mom’s ass at Dr. Mario. Yup, old school Nintendo. I might even bust out Rad Racer later.

Date nights haven’t happened with their usual frequency between Becky and I, so when we do manage to have some girlie fun, it’s that much more enjoyable. This evening her and I ventured to Main Street’s recently refurbished District 319 theatre between Cordova and Hastings. The First Weekend Club [website] was hosting an exclusive showing of the Canadian film Young People F*cking [official website], a favourite at this year’s Toronto Film Festival.

The film follows four couples and one threesome as they push and explore their personal – and not so personal – sexual boundaries. Don’t let the title fool you – it’s not something designed to grab attention. The film really is essentially about sex and the different ways it manifests circumstantially. The end result is always entirely funny, and this smart film was wonderfully and honestly acted by a fistful of Canadian talent.

Disclaimer: this video trailer contains subject matter and language that some of my viewers may find offensive. Use your discretion; it’s NSFO.

And speaking of young people f*cking (excuse that as being my most vulgar segue ever), may I proudly present to you my future niece or nephew!

Trevor and Laura were finally able to bring home some ultrasound pictures from the Dawson Creek clinic today. She’s now 20 weeks (or 5 months) along in her pregnancy, and needless to say, I’m getting extremely excited! It’s amazing to see the baby’s spine, face and tiny little fingers. My brother was overwhelmed seeing his son or daughter’s heartbeat. Hopefully more pictures will be available as her pregnancy progresses, so you can be sure I’ll be posting them here.

“I’ll wait here in the car while you ride the ferry. I’m not allowed upstairs, but this metal room with plastic chairs is lovely.”

Photo: *MarS on Flickr

“Sorry…I can’t come in the grocery store with you.”

“Enjoy the restaurant. I know I fit in your handbag, but I have to stay at home.”

Photo: Lex in the City on Flickr

“You’re going shopping without me? Now I’m sad…”

“Go enjoy your coffee – I’ll stay here tied to this metal pole.”

Photo: Eve D. on Flickr

“We’re going on a trip? Yay! Oh wait…I have to stay in a tiny crate in the plane’s cargo area? Oh.”

“Let’s play! But it has to be outside because that’s the only place I’m welcome (even though lots of moms don’t like me).”

Photo: Simon Davison on Flickr

“I’m tired. Just tired of getting no respect…”

I find it completely and constantly amazing at how many places confine dogs to certain areas – or ban them entirely. One could make the argument that dogs can be a health and cleanliness hazard at establishments such as restaurants and grocery stores, but tell me which small child that spends each day with 30 other kids in daycare or a classroom isn’t equally as hazardous to health standards.

While you may not appreciate canine companions accompanying their owners in public, I don’t appreciate your crying, bratty, snotty, Kool-Aid stained, germy, dirty, pajama-clad, Croc-wearing, spoiled, loud urchin of an offspring infringing on my personal space.

The use of this photo is illustrative; I am making no inference to this particular child.
Photo: Clappstar on Flickr.

I suppose that since she is now in her second trimester, it’s okay for me to exclaim that I’m going to be a first-time Auntie in only a few months! Trevor and Laura are expecting their first child in April, 2009 and I could not be happier for them.

Throughout my teens and very early 20s, I couldn’t wait to be a mommy. The idea was thoroughly exciting, and it was one of the only things my close girlfriends and I aspired to. One particular girlfriend, Sarah, even bought me a baby name book and baby booties for my 20th birthday (I can’t believe I even just admitted to that)! Two days ago I found out that Sarah is also pregnant and due around the same time as Laura. I am thrilled for her!

This is me, many years ago. I was pretty cute.

When we all first found out that Laura was with child, my mom became slightly concerned for me, being that I’m the older sibling and that, in theory, I should’ve become the first parent. My response was simply that I’m glad that it’s them and not me. C’est what?

As we all get older, we no doubt change in many ways. I no longer feel to be the sentimental romantic I used to be. Doing something practical and helpful for me is more heartwarming than a dozen roses. And having a baby is no longer something I feel is on my must do list – and I’m not the only one.

Another girlfriend of mine and her husband are constantly pestered by family and friends as to when they’re going to pop one out, but it simply is not on their priority list right now. And yet, so many question “what’s wrong with them?” It is far too easy to slip into a life built around someone else’s definitions of happiness and success.

This is not to say that I will never have a baby and isn’t to say that I don’t want to be a mother. It is to say that, right now, it isn’t where I’m at. Right now, I like dogs more than kids. Right now, I like that I can go out and shell out a couple hundred dollars on something new and fabulous for myself instead of diapers and burping cloths. Right now, I like that I can sleep for 10 hours on weekends.

Selfish of me? Perhaps to some. But at least I’m being honest with myself and living the life that I want to live – not the life someone else wants me to live.