Budding Gardeners Love Visiting Laporte Gardens

by Isabelle My little guy loves helping out in the garden, and now that he's almost four, I can honestly say that he does help me when we're outside together. He helps with the weeding and tilling, carries gardening tools around the yard, sows seeds in the starter containers and fills pots up with soil. Of course, when I need to run gardening-related errands, he's the first one to put his shoes on and run to the car.

Our absolute favorite gardening centre is Laporte Gardens, located on Old Montreal Road near Trim (just east of Orleans). Not only do they cater to all of my gardening needs, with a large, well-organized selection of trees, shrubs, plants and herbs, but they have also thought of the little ones who visit their centre with mom and dad. Our visit starts with a quick overview of what's on sale indoors, where you can find a selection of pots, seeds, books, and other gardening items, but most importantly, where Tim Horton's coffee and Timbits are provided free of charge to customers (a small charitable donation is suggested but not required).

The large outdoor area provides tons of entertainment for little ones, who (when it's not too busy), can run around the aisles of trees and plants and play in the covered wooden playstructure. The playstructure, of course, is the highlight of the visit, although the soil and mulch pick-up is also very popular with my son - we drive to a designated area, where helpful (and strong!) young men pack up our car. Very impressive to a three year-old.

Isabelle is the mom of 3.5 year old Jay and two-month old Rosie. You can also find her at Dr. Peach’s Blog.

Camping with kids

by Julie Did you give up your camping adventures the minute diapers entered your home? Ya, me too.

I had never camped as a child, only as an adult. I fell in love with camping for:

•    The satisfying feeling that would come over me from having pushed my body hard from the hiking, canoeing or portaging to get to the site. •    The heavenly feeling of being in the middle of nowhere with nothing to do but read my book or take a nap. •    The romantic nights, sitting around a campfire sipping red wine.

Now, review that list again and imagine putting children in the picture. Doesn’t work, does it? All the reasons I loved camping … *poof* … gone.

But recently, my husband and I have headed back into the outdoors – two kids in tow. Although our much-loved list is now adapted, we haven’t had to give it all up entirely.

•    If you’ve been a hard core camper, the notion of “car camping” is depressing indeed! But rather than throw in the towel, seek out quiet, more rustic sites (hint: look for sites that don’t offer facilities like showers). These will have far few people and don’t line up camping sites in a parking-lot style. Instead, each site has been carefully developed for some privacy and remains treed. (You can see photos of a camping site we recently stayed at in Algonquin Park here.) •    Take turns with your spouse to allow for some quiet time. One parent takes the kids for a hike or simply stays as the alert and awake supervisor, while the other is free to doze off or get completely absorbed in a book. •    After all that time in the fresh air, your children will be tired and ready to drop into bed! But, unfortunately, so are you. Try hard to stay up for at least 15 minutes of time together – alone – cuddling and staring at the camp fire, before you join the kids in sleepy-land.

There are plenty of great tip-lists available via a simple google search on camping with kids, so I won’t even try to replicate them.

Instead, I will share with you a list of tips directly from my seven-year-old daughter.

•    Go for hikes! Go on an animal safari and look for garden snakes. •    If not in public, let your kids swim nudie! •    Let the kids get as dirty as they want. •    Collect sticks and make a tipi or a fort. •    Let the kids read as late as they want! •    Bring your two-wheeler bike. •    Make s’mores after dinner.

And, last but not least, she offered these wise words of wisdom to camping parents:

•    Don’t be worry warts!

Julie is an Ottawa local and mother of two. Her personal blog is Coffee with Julie.

Anna Epp Photography : a Mother's Day giveway!

I'm a photo person. I take a lot of photos (I even start photo challenges ;)) and I prefer to put up photograph after photograph on my walls instead of buying art. But there is a distinct lack of "mommy" in our photos.... she's generally behind the camera.  And to be honest, daddy is often playing wrangler so he doesn't make it into that many photos either.  So every once in awhile I feel it's important to schedule a time to see a professional photographer to take some nice family shots of all of us together. I met Anna from Anna Epp Photography last year when I was pregnant with my twins. I wanted to do something special to commemorate the pregnancy and also get some photos of our family in the last weeks that we were still a family of three. The photos we got are not only beautiful but I will treasure them forever.

"Anna Epp Photography offers on location, natural light, custom photography.  We will come to your home or to one of Ottawa's fabulous parks or urban areas, the choice is yours. We like your family to be relaxed and enjoy the experience of being photographed. With each session we try to tell a story, your story, capturing that moment in time."

Here are some samples of some of Anna's amazing work (that's Kiernan kissing my belly in the first collage!)

If you're still looking for a mother's day gift I highly recommend booking a portrait session for you and your family. Or win one here!!

The giveaway

Anna has donated a mini- photo session for our fabulous Kids in the Capital readers! It's our first giveaway and we're very excited about it!

The photo session will be at 11:30am on May 15 at Andrew Hayden Park (raindate May 29.) The mini-session consists of a 30 minute time slot, with at least 10 unique poses, two 5x7s, and 25% off studio products (prints, canvases, cds and albums.)

If you are free on May 15 at 11:30 am and are interested in winning, simply leave us a comment and tell us what your favourite thing to do for mother's day. For an extra entry, visit Anna's Facebook Group, become a fan and then leave us a comment to let us know you've done it. Deadline to enter is Tuesday May 11 at 5pm.

Good luck and happy Mother's day!!

Never underestimate the entertainment value of Pooh Sticks

by Shawna With the days heating up (I am sticking my fingers in my ears at mention of nighttime near-freezing temperatures this coming week - lalala, I can't hear you!),  my family is itching to get outside.  Yes, there are lots of fabulous, known parks we can target, but just as appealing is going for a walk or throwing helmets on the kids' little melons and stuffing them in our usedottawa.com-purchased bike trailer to explore.  After all, playgrounds might offer the kids a chance to run around, but the most activity I usually get there is pushing swings, or helicoptering around my almost-two-year-old to make sure he doesn't plummet through a gap in the play structure rails enroute to the slide.

We're new to our Barrhaven neighbourhood (as is everyone around us: we live in a brand-new development) so so far our forays have had us exploring close to home.  We have a path that loops around the water containment pond that's almost across the street.  If we're smart, we head to the left when we get there and branch out about halfway around.  We only return to the path do the second half when we know we're done with the walk.  You see, there's a bridge on that half, and we have learned that throwing pebbles into the water is an inexhaustible source of entertainment when you're a half-pint.  And throwing sticks on the upstream side and waiting for them to appear on the other?  You cannot imagine the suspense!  Especially because the current is extremely sluggish once the spring run-off has happened.  (Where did my stick go?  Why isn't it here yet?  Did it get stuck on something?  I'll get more rocks to throw while I'm waiting... Did I miss my stick while I was getting the rocks? Where is my stick? THERE IT IS!  LOOK MUMMA, LOOK!)  This game, by the way, was "invented" by Winnie the Pooh, hence the name "Pooh Sticks" (no, it's not a scatalogical reference).

Announcements that it is time to go home - or even just move on - are usually greeted with shrill screeches of displeasure, so it's often better to a) hit the bridge on the way home and mentally budget some time for lingering there, and b) have an activity at home which they want to do to lure them away.  My kids, for example, are big fans of the bath, so that's often how I transform their anger to eager acceptance of leaving.

When the decision has been made to go for a bike ride, my husband and I tow our wee mites around (okay, he tows, I just bike along unencumbered with him) until we've been going for a while and see a likely little spot, then we hop out and release our mini-Krakens.  Any small play structure or inviting path to explore will do.   Then the kids get free rein until it's time to pop them back in the trailer and head home.  Since they're usually getting cranky at this point, we quickly learned to proffer a supply of liquids and finger-food snacks to placate them on the way home.

Man, does it feel good to be doing something active for entertainment again.  For the kids, it's about the destination; for the adults it's about the journey, and this sort of activity covers both bases.  Win!

Shawna is mom to 4-year-old Sage and almost-2-year-old Harris.  She has  been writing online since 2003, and her latest project is a fledgling photography blog.  As a delicate hothouse flower, she is not winter's biggest fan and is expansively happy that spring is here!

Being prepared: having a family emergency plan

by Brie I am a pretty cautious parent. I always have to walk down the steep staircase first in case my 3.5 year old or nineteen month old slips. I am always checking to make sure the park gates are closed and no kids can escape onto the busy streets. I always check both ways, and then check again, before we cross the street. That's just me. I feel better when I feel like I am being careful, or as I like to jokingly say, paranoid.

One thing I haven't done, and now plan to, is make a family emergency plan.  This is right up my alley.

I have been thinking about this because May 2 to 8 is Emergency Preparedness Week. I watched a short video made by Public Safety Canada that discusses what to do in different scenarios to make actual situations less stressful and save time during an emergency. The video had a number of good suggestions. I liked the idea of having copies of important documents and photos of the kids kept somewhere other than the house in case of an evacuation.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uFZzuPe6QAc&feature=player_embedded]

Now I just need to sit down and write out the plan. Thankfully there is an easy online tool on the  GetPrepared.ca website that will walk you through the things you should include in your plan. The website also provides tips on how to talk to kids about emergencies, how to prepare if you or a family member has special needs and what you should do for your pets.

They also talk about having an emergency kit. Reviewing the list posted online I can see that there are some items that we need to add to the kit we already have in our cupboard. My mother-in-law, who is maybe even more cautious than I am, made up kits for us with emergency supplies of food and water. I need to add copies of important documents, an extra set of keys and a copy of our soon to be created emergency plan.

What about you? Do any of you have family emergency plans? Do you have any tips to share?

Brie is the mom of a 3.5 year old daughter “the girl” and eighteen month old son “the boy”. You can read her blog at Capital Mom.