By B

 

Maybe you’ve just stumbled onto our blog, but you’ve never been to one of our events. Maybe you’re a parent or caregiver in the Peoria area who wants to learn more about how to safely use a carrier, but you aren’t sure where to start. Let me talk a little bit about what we at Babywearing International of Peoria do. Right now, we have two different events (but, we’d love to expand that in the future). All of our events are led by one of our certified VBEs.

VBE=Volunteer Babywearing Educator. I talk here a bit about what a VBE is, exactly.

We have our monthly meetings. These are on Monday nights, usually the first Monday of the month. They are currently being held at the Peoria Public Library, North Branch. You can check out our calender for dates. Meetings run from 5:00 to 7:00 (but don’t be afraid to come later or leave earlier if that’s what works for your schedule!). 5:00 to 5:30 is carrier check-in and mingling. Meeting content starts at 5:30. We feature a different babywearing topic each meeting, like “winter babywearing” or “nursing in carriers”.

We also feature one carrier from our lending library at each meeting, demonstating it and talking about the benefits of that particular carrier. After that, it’s hands on help from our VBEs. Saturday meetups have no meeting content and are all hands on help. You can drop in any time during the Open Help Hours and stay as long or as little as you wish.

What kind of hands on help? Well, you can learn to nurse in a mei tai.

 

You can learn to wear your twins. (note: this isn’t ideal positioning here. We’d like to see baby’s knees higher than his bottom, with fabric tucked to the knees. This is this mama’s first time wearing them both. We should’ve checked more carefully before we took the pic.)

You can bring your own carrier and get help on back carries.

You can find the right carrier for your newborn.

You can practice your wrapping skills.

Or try your hand at wearing two.

 

You are welcome to bring your older children to the meetings. There are generally several older siblings there. Feel free to bring a snack and a quiet activity for them.

Our events are free and open to anyone. We do encourage you to consider a paid membership. Membership funds help us grow our lending library. Borrowing from the lending library is a perk of paid memberships, though certainly not required to get hands on help from our Babywearing Educators. If you have questions about how to wear your baby in a way that is safe and comfortable for you both, I encourage you to attend one of our events!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We are offering Smencils as a fundraiser.  Smens, Smencils, and Colored Smencils bagsets will be available for you to purchase and our group gets to keep a portion of the money.  This will close on 2/1/2012 and money needs to be paid by that date.

 

The Smens bagset contains 10 Smens for $20 each.  The scents that will be in the set are:  Aloha, Mocha, Creamsicle, Ninja Berry, Red Licorice, Passion Fruit, Mystery Scent, Black Licorice, Pink Lemonade, and Banana Fo Fana.

 

The Smencils and Colored Smencils each contain 10 Smencils for $12 each.  The scents in those sets are:  Bubblegum, Cinnamon, Tropical Blast, Grape, Cotton Candy, Black Cherry, Watermelon, Orange, Very Berry, and Rootbeer.

 

Smencils are pencils and pens made from rolled sheets of recycled newspaper. Smencils and Smens work the same as any regular pencil or pen, but they smell way better, and they’re good for the environment too!

We will have some Smencils at the January meeting (1/9) for your sniffing and buying pleasure!

Here’s the Facebook event page for our monthly meeting. All of our monthly meetings are open to anyone interested in learning more about how to safely use a baby carrier, anyone wanting to support our group and those looking for some babywearing friends! You can bring a carrier of yours that you need help with. We will have our lending library carriers there. You can try your baby in any of those. We always have one or two VBEs (Volunteer Babywearing Educators),who are knowledgeable in safe babywearing, to help you out.

This meeting’s topic is Winter Babywearing. The featured carrier is Sleepy Wrap.

The schedule of meetings will be: 5:00-5:30: carrier check ins, mingling; 5:30-6:00: introductions, spotlight topic and carrier; 6:00-6:30: one on one help, group help; 6:30-7:00 carrier check out.

Feel free to come late or leave early. You are encouraged to bring the baby/child you’ll be wearing, if possible, so you can try on carriers together.

Interested in helping your new favorite babywearing group raise funds? We’re
working hard to expand our sling library! (Details on that coming soon) Well,
you can!

2 ways:

Join Babywearing
International! We get a portion of the proceeds from all membership dues. To
become a member of BWI of Peoria, just Paypal $30 to heartofillinoisbabywearers@gmail.com Put
“membership” in the subject line so we know what it’s for. You can send
donations the same way, just put “donation” in the subject line.

OR

Buy a Peoria Dining Tour book from
us! These things are terrific. My family had one last year and gave 2 as gifts.
You can see the list
of 100 restaurants in the book. There’s a wide variety, from fine dining to
fast food. The book is filled with Buy 1 Get 1 Free coupons. It will pay for
itself in just a few meals out. Every restaurant is in the Peoria area, from
Lacon to Pekin and all over Peoria. If you’re interested in buying a book ($30),
shoot us an email at info@bwiofpeoria.org We’d love to hook you and your holiday gift recipients up!

VBE=Volunteer Babywearing Educator. Each group must have at least two, at least one being a non-vendor. We take both a written and a proficiency exam. The proficiency exam is either in person, if you live in an area close to a certifier, or via Skype, how I did mine. You do some Q&A, demo carries, and talk the tester through carries as though she were a parent needing help. BWI really wants to make sure that VBEs know what they’re doing, it seems! I’m very for this. This is my 3rd year doing babywearing education. I’ll tell you, I wouldn’t have passed the written exam when I first started. Or, at the very least, I wouldn’t have felt confident enough to actually turn it in.

Our group is led by two VBEs, Beth and Kirsteen. We are working on “about” posts for each. VBEs lead the meetings and help get babies into carriers. We also do BWI outreach events, presenting about safe babywearing in the community. If you’re interested in having our certified VBEs present to your group, send us an email info@bwiofpeoria.org

We are officially a chapter of Babywearing International, Babywearing International of Peoria! Go like us on Facebook! Keep your eyes peeled for all sorts of cool, new, official stuff from us! There’s a lot of great stuff coming up!

To celebrate International Babywearing Week, we decided to walk the mall in our carriers to raise awareness of babywearing. We had all sizes of babies, all sorts of carriers. We had such a great time, we’ll make it a regular event. Stay tuned for info on that!

Our Wrapsody Bali Baby Stretch, recently donated. Review coming soon on this awesome carrier!

The whole gaggle of babywearers!

Many thanks to our awesome photographer Amanda, of Amanda E Photography.

 

Picture your child eating a delicious dessert that you made. (Let’s
say, chocolate cake because who doesn’t like chocolate cake?) People
walking by stop and look at the cake you made.  “That looks so good”
they say.  “I tried to make some, my kids didn’t like it.”

I might think to myself, “who doesn’t like chocolate cake?” and “you
must have bought sugar free chocolate cake then”.

When I am wearing my baby, I hear many of the same comments again and again.
“I wish someone would carry me.”, “I wish they had those when my child
was a baby”,
“All snuggled up next to mom”
But the comment I hear more than any other is “I tried one of those
and my kids didn’t like it.”

I never know what to say in response.  Here is my initial thoughts,
“Your kids didn’t like being held close to their mom/dad?” (your kids
didn’t like chocolate cake?). “You must have tried them in one of
those “not-so good” carriers (the sugar- free cake).

In the end, I feel sorry for the parents and for the child because
they probably did want to wear their child but didn’t have support or
the knowledge to do so.

In the past, I would just smile and nod. Today, I am so happy to be
able to tell people there is a resource for them (or at least for them
to tell others about).  If they are interested in making chocolate
cake again, here is the recipe. hoibabywearers.org

~H