Metro News has teamed up with a great new website called GigPark. This is a place where anyone can recommend a business whose services they really like. What great concept – especially for small businesses that rely heavily on word of mouth! I really hope it takes off and Metro is doing a great job of making that happen by allowing readers to vote for their favourite business in a specific trade each week. This week it was for Graphic Designers and I was so pleased to see my name on the list! A special thanks goes out to everyone who recommended me! Next week: caterers! Know a great Ottawa caterer? Help them out by recommending them today!
Last Friday, I talked about some free service for new parents that really helped me out when my son was really young. Today I thought I’d let you know about some fun activities to get you out of the house and out of the malls during the winter. Of course, right now Winterlude is on so that is a MUST. Even if it’s with baby in a backpack to check out the sculptures and have a Beaver Tail. With Family Day weekend coming up it may be a bit crowded but it’s kind of fun to be among crowds again after being couped up all winter either at home or the office.
As a new parent, if you are mourning the loss of your date nights and miss going to the movies, you can go on a date with your baby to either Movies for Mommies or Stars and Strollers. The sound is turned down so as not to upset tender eardrums and the lights are left dimmed so you can still see around you. They have stroller parking and changing supplies and sometimes free baby food samples and other goodies. Best of all, no one will glare at you if your baby start hollering or if you need to breastfeed or walk up and down the aisle if your little one wants to stay on the move.
Want something a little more active? My son loves the water so check out the City of Ottawa’s recreation guide for information on swimming lessons and public swim schedules. Trips to museums and the National Gallery of Canada (free admission for children 12 and under) are great when baby is still happy in the stroller.
When they get a little older they’ll have fun exploring things on their own. The Canadian Children’s Museum is fantastic. Another fun one is the Canadian Museum of Nature. Did you know it’s free on Saturday mornings! Bonus! The Aviation Museum has a play room full of toys for kids and who doesn’t love the crazy kitchen in the Canada Science and Technology Museum. My son also loves all the big steam engines there. Once the weather warms up, bring them to see farm animals at the Canada Agriculture Museum and they can see for themselves what goes Moo.
Finally, I recently took my son to Cosmic Adventures and he was a little scared with the big kids playing tag and practically running on top of him so I’d recommend the upstairs section for ages 3 and under the first time you go. Careful! I heard kids get addicted to this place and it isn’t all that cheap!
Did I miss anything? Please tell me about anything other great activities in the Ottawa area. I’ve never taken my son to Gymboree or Star Gymnastics or some of the music classes I know are out there so I’d love to know what you thought of their programs.
Today is Friday and also the day I decided I wanted to share with my son who is in daycare the rest of the week – so I hope you don’t mind if I make this blog a more personal one. On Fridays, I usually take my son to a local playgroup. I started taking him when he was 14 months-old and still home with me full time. I just wish I had known about it sooner – which is why I hope that this blog might help someone else realize all the great FREE services new parents have access to in Ottawa. First of all, a week after my son was born, a public health nurse came to my house to check up on us. How awesome is that! I didn’t know this was standard practice until I got my ‘welcome baby’ kit at the hospital. She weighed my son and asked me how things were going and if I had any questions (what new parent doesn’t?!). She also gave me a list of local Well Baby Clinics. Something else I hadn’t heard of but was pleased to discover one such clinic took place once a week at the community centre down the street from our house. The proximity was especially important to me because my son was born a week before Christmas in 2007. Do you remember the winter of 2007-2008? Many cities broke their snowfall records and Ottawa got a whopping 436.7 cm (171.9 in) just shy of the all time record of 444.1 cm. We had only one car that my husband used to commute to work and I was recovering from a c-section (my stubborn boy was breach). So you can imagine that venturing outdoors with a newborn was a daunting task. I was worried about the cold, slipping on the ice and hurting my incision and/or my baby. No way could you push a stroller with that much snow so I bundle him up in a Moby wrap under my coat and walked to the community centre to get my baby weighed once a week and have an opportunity to chat other new moms while I waited my turn to see a public health nurse. I could ask them anything from advice on breastfeeding to this or that normal. The clinic sees baby up to 3 months and it was such a comfort to know he was gaining weight (he was slow to gain in the beginning) and developping normally.
Fast forward to the following winter when once again stuck indoors and developing another case of cabin fever, an online search allowed me to discover a free play group that ran 4 days a week from 9:30-11:30am. By then, friends that had been on maternity leave at the same time as me had returned to work so this was a chance for my son to interact with other children, new toys and activities and songs while I could socialize with other parents. They offered snacks to the kids and sometimes had workshops for the parents on various topics relating to child development. These were nice breaks while the facilitators supervised the kids. Right now on Fridays, one of the facilitators comes in half an hour earlier to teach a parent and tot yoga class.
I have been so impressed with how the play group is run and the diversity of parents and care-givers who use it. The facilitators are well-educated and great with the kids. My son now asks for them by name and loves to give them hugs.
So for any new parent that is sick of winter and tired of the mall, drop by a local play group! The Ottawa Public Library also has some great programs so check them out too – click here and use the Search Library Programs for Babytime or Toddlertime.
I hope this helps! I would love to hear about any other programs that are useful to new parents so I can pass the information along to my maternity and newborn portrait clients.
I had been meaning to add my favourite images from sessions as far back as October but like most photographers, the time leading up to the Holidays is our busiest time and I fell behind on my blog. My bad. So rather than put a whole bunch of images on one post, I finally created some albums on my Facebook Fan Page. So if you want to see more than what I showcase on my website check it out and become a fan! I’ll continue to add albums and images from recent photo sessions there. Let me know what you think, I’d love to hear your comments!
Happy New Year! Ok, so it’s now January 21 and I’ve already fallen behind on one (ok, maybe more than one) of my New Year’s Resolutions – blog more often! Well last night I attended the launch of Entrepreurial Moms Ottawa chapter – EM-Ottawa – and it was also my first time attending a business networking event. Lots of great women – including 4 other photographers so we were the most represented industry! Part of me felt a little nervous seeing so much competition but I hope that being part of this group will allow us to help grow our industry and each other’s businesses rather than feel like competitors. As Alicia Caine (my pricing guru) says it best: Let’s not all compete to have a piece of the pie – how about we work together to make the pie bigger? When I joined the Professional Photographers of Canada and started going to local meetings it was so refreshing to see the camaraderie and willingness to help other photographers – which in turn can only help our industry.
Anyway, last night’s speaker was a young entrepreneur named Erin Blaskie. Her business is the internet (she claims to be online 20 hours a day – even when walking her dogs!) and helping others make the most out of this powerful tool. Her insight on the world of blogging and Twitter was great as those are 2 areas I haven’t quite mastered. My biggest concern was how do I separate the personal side from the business side. Well, she says don’t. Be yourself and people will connect and trust you more. And I guess in both photography and graphic design, you really are selling yourself and your look and style – which may not be for everyone and that’s ok. So the more authentic you are, the more people will like you and want to work with YOU over anyone else you might have the same skill set. That’s something that another mentor of mine, Dane Sanders, founder of FastTrack Photographer talks about a lot.
I love that the internet has allowed me to get inspiration from so many people – especially as a mother of a young child who works from home. It can be isolating at times so it’s important to feel connected to a community and get encouragement. As I am learning, making a business successful takes more than just talent, it takes a lot of determination and willingness to work hard on areas that might not come naturally to us creative types.
I am hoping that being part Entrepreneurial Moms will give me the same kind of motivation with the added bonus of building relationships on a local level and in person. Ok, so now I need to figure out how to tweet this and go on to my next New Year’s Resolution – join LinkdIn!
Let me know if this blog has been useful and if you have any other great tips or resources I should know about!
Thanks for reading!
Vanessa
Your Ottawa Photographer and Graphic Designer
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