BOISSEVAIN, MB—Six-month-old Ava Desjardins displayed signs of exasperation, restlessness, and laboured breathing this morning as her mother Penny Desjardins propped her up on the family couch to take a photo of her daughter in an enormous hot pink flower headband and a tiny string of pearls.

"I also gathered up an armful of 50 ballerina tutus – I can't even tell you why or how I acquired them – and just left them inexplicably strewn around in the background of the photo," the older Desjardins explains. "I then carefully arranged 16 tiny white leather purses so that they were delicately hanging off Ava's shoulders."

Desjardins says that as she was about to snap the photo, a noisy moving truck drove by the house, causing baby Ava to turn her head and look out the window.

"Oh no no no no you don't!" Desjardins laughs, gently guiding her daughter's chin back to the camera. "I had to remind Ava that she has no interest in that!"

Just to make sure her child enjoyed absolutely no sense of possibility about her identity for any length of time, Desjardins quickly added some items to Ava's tiny purse: a tiny lip gloss and a tiny business card for a Botox clinic.

At that point, Desjardins says her daughter grew increasingly fidgety and uncomfortable, coughing a little bit and craning her neck repeatedly to look for the truck, which was long gone.

"After a bit of whining and whinging, she sort of smacked her hand down angrily on the couch," Desjardins recalls. "We weren't feeling very ladylike this morning now were we, princess?!"