I have been thinking about the evolution of this little blog of mine. It’s funny for me to think of how and why I got started doing this, and how and why I have continued.
Oh wait. You don’t know how I started?
Well, let me tell you all about it.
On September 11, 2009 I published my first post. Miss was about 7 months old. I was using Blogger back then. I didn’t know how to upload photos. I didn’t know what the heck to write about. But I took the plunge and started anyway.
The reason I started? Well, if you read my first post, it says that I began blogging as a way to keep family informed about what was going on with us (meaning Miss).
That was true, but it’s not the whole story. I actually started blogging because I wanted to participate in a cloth diaper swap. Ha! It makes me laugh to remember. How strange that I started this whole thing for that reason. When I first started using cloth diapers on Miss I was kind of obsessed with buying cute “fluff” (that’s cloth-diapering speak for, well, cloth diapers). I tried all different kinds. I wrote blog posts about diapers. I really wanted to participate in that swap, but the hostess wouldn’t let me without a blog. Having the participants blog about what they got was pretty much the point of the whole thing. A friend of mine, who used to blog herself, suggested that I just start up a blog, and then if I didn’t want to keep at it I could stop whenever. So, I did. Start a blog, I mean.
In September 2009 we were at the Farm for a visit. I remember messing around on the Blogger site, trying to figure out how to start. Obviously I needed a name for my blog, so I thought for a few minutes, the name popped into my head, I liked it, and off I went. I didn’t really spend much time planning the blog because I didn’t even know if I’d continue it after the diaper swap.
And yet, here I am. Why did I continue blogging? There are three main reasons.
1. As I mentioned in my first post, to share my girls with family who don’t get to see them very often. My Mom reads this blog. My Dad, my Auntie, my Mother-in-law, my aunt in Florida, my Grandma, and many other aunts and uncles and cousins too. It’s wonderful to go to a family gathering and have people comment to me about the things they know about my girls, or talk to my kids like they know them, much more than they would otherwise, I think. A few times people have said to me things like, “I follow your blog, I hope that’s not weird/creepy/stalker-ish.” To which I reply “No! That’s not weird. That’s why I write it!” We don’t live near any family members. So I love that my family and friends feel as though they know my kids pretty well even though they don’t see them often (or often enough).
2. The second reason is that I just love writing. I enjoy the process of having ideas for posts and putting them into words. It’s a creative and intellectual outlet for me. I like the way Jen at Conversion Diary puts it in this post. Reading that kind of felt like she had crawled inside my head.
3. Finally, I think about how amazing it will be for my girls to be able to read all of this some day. To see all the things that they did. The funny things they said. The people we know. The places we went.
I know that when I was young I loved looking at my baby book (such as it was) and the few photos there were of me as a baby and little girl (oh how I do appreciate digital photography). I liked hearing stories about myself as a little girl. When I became a mom I wanted to know all about how I was as a baby and little girl. I want my girls to have all of this information to enjoy. And I want to be able to remember it too.
I hope that my girls will love reading this material someday. They already enjoy looking at the photos. And so I keep taking photos, and writing, and posting.
