Pretend Mommy

I spend a lot of time with kids. I worked through university as a part-time nanny and babysitter so I have had plenty of experience with feeding and entertaining, playdates and playgrounds, school pick-ups and drop-offs, and time-outs and bedtimes. I can discuss, with a reasonable amount of accuracy, Toopy, Max and Ruby, Bob the Builder, the Backyardigans and more. So I guess it is only fitting that I am a key employee of a company run by mom-entrepreneurs that specializes in baby gifts!

This is a mom company. Throughout the day we talk about babies, families, and life. Sometimes my work day is interrupted by a 4 year old who needs help with her computer game or a sick kid home from school that brings me pictures she has drawn. Sometimes there are babies at business meetings.

I started reading “mommy blogs” and keeping up to date on the world of celebrity babies – all work related I’m quick to tell anyone who will listen. But somewhere along the way I realized I was enjoying them….and occasionally related to them. I guess I am far more entrenched in their world than I thought.

I used to think I ended up at Admiral Road by accidental networking (I babysat their kids), but the more time I spend here, I realize that there is probably a good reason that I fit in so well. In school I thought I was working towards a degree to get a job. As it turns out, sometimes knowledge of diapers and Dora can be a lot more useful if you’ve got the right audience.

Admiral Road has been making personalized blankets since 2002.

Kids say the darndest things

Imagine learning about a world where you had no context and no reference points. This must be what it's like to acquire vocabulary as a three-year-old. I love my daughter's turns of phrase because they almost always make sense. To her. One of the perks of working from home is being exposed to what she has to say throughout the day. Here is what she might experience:

She occasionally enjoys a bowl of Raisin Brown cereal.

But at the coffee shop she likes to order a bright yellow croissant. (Butter croissant.)

For lunch she's partial to a girl cheese sandwich.

And her favourite flavour of ice cream is choc-lick.

After she bathes, she'll slip into her bath-rope.

If she's going away, she'll pack her things in a soup case.

And the worst part about summer is most certainly when I have to apply the sun-scream.


Surely your little ones must say these kinds of things too. Please write to me and tell me what's on your kid's mind. I'd love to hear.

Admiral Road has been making personalized blankets since 2002.

Hello kettle? It’s me, pot.

All we do, all day long, is think about baby names. Here at Admiral Road we really see it all. We see traditional baby names, avant garde baby names, and everything in between.

Sometimes we see traditional names with deliberately unusual spellings and, admittedly, I have been known to wonder why a parent would give a child a name that he/she will surely need to spell/pronounce for everybody else for the rest of time.

When I was expecting my second daughter, we wanted to honour my late grandfather (whose Hebrew name was ‘Ya’akov’). We happily stumbled upon the Hebrew name ‘Yakira’ which means ‘precious.’ It was the perfect Hebrew name: unusual but pretty and a tribute to my grandfather.

It also helped to inspire our daughter’s English name, the name which she goes by: Kyra. We loved it.

I dutifully researched her name-to-be in the baby books and found that there were multiple spellings of Kyra (Kira, Keira, Kiera, Keera). Here is the reason we chose the K-Y-R-A spelling: At the time she was born, it was the most popular spelling! I wasn’t trying to be weird. I wasn’t trying to be unusual. I wasn’t trying to present my unborn daughter with a lifelong challenge. In fact, it was quite the opposite. I actually thought that I was doing the kid a favour!

Then Keira Knightly showed up on the scene. After a few hit movies, not only did the name Kyra increase in popularity, so too did the K-E-I-R-A spelling.

To make things worse, I’d show up with my infant daughter at her doctor’s appointments, and the receptionist would call for “KY-ruh” when it was her turn (rhymes with pie/sky/rye). People couldn’t pronounce her name! I had inadvertently given my daughter a name that was routinely mispronounced!

We have sewn thousands of baby names on to thousands of blankets. After all these years, surely you would think that of all people, I would have been able to choose a simple, straightforward name!

Admiral Road has been making personalized blankets since 2002.

excuse me sweetheart, won't you please PUT YOUR SHOES ON!!!

There was a time when I fantasized about travelling the world – meeting adventure and intrigue along the way. Now I fantasize about walking into any bathroom in my house and finding a flushed toilet. (This is followed closely in the rankings by finding that a dish has made it to the dishwasher without the mandatory stop in the sink – but that’s a marital, not a parenting issue.) Believe me, it’s not like I’ve never pointed out the importance of flushing to my children…it’s only one of long list of things that get said but somehow never heard. I can just hear the parenting experts now saying that we shouldn’t nag our children and we need to hone our messages, etc. etc. The question is – how do we refrain from nagging our children while setting expectations for behaviour – or getting through the day for that matter. Are we meant to settle for the bathroom surprise?

Recently a career mom that I know and love told me with exasperation that her son never puts his shoes on when asked. With a heavy heart she told me that she is sure this is because she works out of the home and isn’t able to manage discipline during the work week. I laughed. Hard. I’m a mom who gets her kids off to school each morning and I assured her that the sentence ‘please put your shoes on’ has never been uttered fewer than 8 times before working in my house – each time with increasing volume and exasperation. I’ve been asking around – and apparently there are legions of children who won’t put their shoes on when asked – I’m beginning to wonder if this is even a global phenomenon (my mind is drifting to children in Fiji refusing to put their flip flops on…).

So what is a beleaguered mom to do? I’m of the firm belief that we moms are hardest on ourselves. I am trying to learn to be kinder to myself and more accepting of the many imperfections of life. Maybe I don’t need to accept that my kids don’t flush or put their shoes on when asked – but maybe I can try to accept that I’m going to have to keep reminding them. Again. And Again.

Admiral Road has been making personalized blankets since 2002.