UPDATE: OK, so I actually do some of these things now (like linky parties) in an effort to try to branch out and become a better Mom's Blogger, but I kinda suck at it - and here's why....
1.) My blog seriously has no rhyme or reason. Zero. It's all over the map. It does not fit into a cutesy decrative box I bought off etsy and then wrapped in an elaborate bow I made after reading a post,"how to tie cute bows"on Pinterest. One post on here will be about
cooking or
preschool crafting or
DIY Halloween Costumes or
kid's birthday parties ideas and
earthquake kits for school/daycare, another will be about
breastfeeding or
postpartum depression or my
water birth story, or a
water birth poem or one about how
time flies by so fast with little ones. Another will be a
crazy, random rant about how I
hate facebook and
why I'm deleting my account the day my child starts kindergarten, then I'll write a
silly parenting
Top Ten, my attempt at giving
parenting advice, about how to
find the balance, or
a love letter to my children and
Spirited Child, and how we (finally) got our
Spirited Child to sleep and
nap advice in general, and then I'll send out a commentary on how we need to
help the homeless, give
thanks and appreciation to those who have
sacrificed for our country and those who are
less fortunate than us, even
showing appreciation for what I have personally as well as trying to figure out how to make sense of a
tragic world while protecting our babies. Oh, and I wrote a
children's book, entered it into a
contest and got it published too. ****
"Can you follow a script please? Geez!" Umm......not..... really. Sorry.
2.) I'm long winded. I'm guess I'm just channeling my inner Hemingway. As you can see from the above post I kinda talk a lot and ramble - which translates into I write a lot which isn't really what people are into these days when they are cruising the interwebs for stuff to read. They want quick, they want in and out, they want 140 characters, they want
Pinnable links that are all ready to go without needing to cut, paste and add a description and they want
awesome, fabulous, creative pics. The average post these days is like 8 words long and filled with a zillion DIY pics that most likely took 3 weeks to complete. Mine are just filled with a bunch of words. And my grammar/spelling sucks. I realize this. I do try to change it and correct it if I see it but I am also aware that there are probably grammar nuts who are cringing while reading this. Feel free to red pen this mo fo. I'm ok with that. ...that is
if you are still reading it.
3.) I don't write about celebrities or their crazy antics at awards shows or whatever they do to try to stay relevant. I also don't write about their babies because that is their private life and I believe that a baby and a child has the right to a private life regardless of who their parents are. That is a huge market for mom's bloggers/mom's message board blogs I've noticed but it's just too gossipy for me. Besides, I don't know these people. No one
really knows them - unless you are actual friends with them in which case I doubt you'd be blogging about their crazy antics and still call them a friend. It's just not my thing. But I do know how hard it can be to be a new parent
without being in the public eye with your every parenting decision under a microscope, like in this
Top Ten Unfortunate Places For Your Toddler To Throw A Tantrum - nightmare! That alone makes me glad I'm not a celebrity mom! I also know that 99.999% of what you read on those sites is all BS. I don't think mom's should judge each other on how they parent or birth. Even when they are a celebrity. The child didn't choose that life and that is their mother who loves them with all of their heart and they will grow up and read the internet someday. Don't be a jerk and a lie spreader. That's just poor people skills and very lazy writing. Like my dad always used to say,
"If you can't say something nice then don't say anything at all." Which brings me to #4.
4.) I will not under any circumstances sell out my children or husband for a laugh in a mean or hurtful way. I have said or shared some
funny things about my kids that someday they too might find funny. But I will not degrade them, embarrass them, make fun of them, tease them, harass them, pick on them, call them names, laugh at the things they haven't learned yet or post naked pictures of them on the potty with a caption underneath telling the world from here on out the age at which they made their first big toilet poop. Jr. High/middle school is hard enough without the threat of finding your frenemy's old, old, old ass pic from their potty training days where their mom posted a pic of them pointing at the doo doo they made on the potty - which then gets printed up and shared all over school. Let's clarify - I do have pics like these because I'm a mom it's part of the job description, but they will never see the light of day on the internet. For this reason alone, I don't really relate well to some
(most) of the other "mom humor bloggers" out there. I feel that sometimes it gets a little mean and bully-ish all in the name of a laugh and blog hits. It just reeks of jr. high to me. "Maybe they'll think I'm cool
(funny) if I say this crappy thing about my friend
(in this case, my own kid.)" Not gonna do it. I also do not feel comfortable in anyway plastering their faces all over my blog and tweeting pics of them constantly with their sweet lil baby faces. That is not to say that I don't have
any pics of my kids on my blog. But some bloggers go above and beyond posting constant pics of their children. To clarify, I'm not opposed to seeing pictures of kids online, I am a mom who loves kids - I'm just kinda surprised to see these children's faces posted so often online by their own parents to be honest. People are weird and people collect pictures of children on their computers that they don't even know. (I have a cop neighbor who deals with catching child internet pedophiles and child porn freaks and weirdos. They collect pics from the internet even if you don't think it seems like it would be a pic they would steal. More on that later.) Also, bloggers don't realize how much personal info they share on their blog over the many posts they write, talking about where they live, etc and it's really easy to connect the dots if you are trying to. The "child shaming pics" (as well as "dog/cat shaming pics") are real hot right now too, like the "get along shirt" pics, give it 5 years and your child will hate you for posting that pic of them online looking pissed and embarrassed for fighting with their sibling. These pictures don't ever go away. ever. Especially if they have been pinned on Pinterest - which they have. A trillion times. If you did a search for first day of school pics on twitter you'd be shocked at how many people posted pics of their child standing in front of their school sign and gave out basically every bit of info on that child. Their full name, age, grade, school, teacher, school address and phone number, the child's face and if you just click on the parent's profile you'll find everything out about them in no time some way or another. Not too smart. Everything changes when you see a picture of your child after doing a search on yourself or when it's been posted/linked from someone else's blog or gets hacked on a pregnancy message board for a fake profile of someone who is pretending to be pregnant with her 3rd set of twins in 3 years. Some people are totally OK with giving their child to the internet. Call me paranoid, I can take it. I just want my kids to be their own person and not have someone come up to them someday saying, "hey I've seen you before on your mom's blog talking about...whatever."
5.) See #2
6.) I love my husband and am very impressed with his mad skillz as a 100% hands on dad so I don't complain about him via my blog on the rare occasion I am upset with him for something. And really, who wants to read about some lady who is gushing over her hubby 24/7. *gag* So, it's kinda back to the point on #4. I don't sell my family out for a laugh and that is a
huge market right now which is a sad commentary on our society I think. I realize that the blogger finds it funny and most likely harmless to poke fun at their kids so that other people can then laugh at them and share the post on their page so even more people can comment and laugh at them too and then ...well... you know what I'm going to say here. We don't need to go getting all "after school special" over here. It's just not cool. However, I did write this
Top Ten about husbands and guys in general.
7.) I do not have any type of blogging/posting schedule therefore I have no repeat followers coming back every week for my "Happy Friday Post," or my "DIY Tuesday Post," or my "Manic Monday Post" or my "Selfie Sunday's post,"or my"Weekly Recipe Roundup Post." I'm making all of this stuff up btw. If there are actually people doing these actual blogs I'm not actually picking on you. I'm just not that
organized to do something weekly. I kinda envy those mom bloggers because they seem uber organized and...well...I'm not. This is a take it when you can get it kind of blog. Like a lending library or one of those little penny trays at the grocery store. Take what you need and leave the rest.
8.) I don't have anything for 8. I don't have a clever, ironic or extremely cute pic for it either. Sorry. I didn't plan this out very well.
9.) I worry about stupid stuff like, "how in the world do some mom's bloggers have 50 comments on a single post and I'm wondering if anyone is even reading anything?" Crickets. To be honest, I've actually gotten over that one...a bit. You know, that's why I've listed it as #9.
No, no, it's ok I'm not crying I just have an eyelash in my eye. It's cool. We're good here. I'm not really sad about not ever having any readers or comments. It's all good.
10.) For the most part I'm kind of a say-what-I-feel-without-mincing-any-words kind of gal. Especially if I'm protecting my children or my family. I'll go all Mama Bear on you in the blink of an eye if I feel that my kids are being threatened in any way. So I think I offend people and make them defensive because for one I'm very sarcastic and in person it comes off hella funny (No, I'm not from Nor Cal but my hubby is). However, sarcasm in the written word is tricky. If people know you, they they know you, so they know you are being sarcastic so they will laugh. When people don't know you which is pretty much 99.989% of the world of people online - they read something that is supposed to be sarcastic and just think, "Wow. Well aren't we just a miserable b!tch all chalk-full of bitter sauce? Bitter, party of one your table is now available. Bitter, party of one?" Another reason why I'm a crappy mom's blogger and piss people off is I talk about stuff like #4 and I write things about how I hate facebook enough to
delete my account 100% from my life! and boy, some people get crazy defensive about their reasonings for liking facebook, for staying on facebook and why they "can't ever" delete their account and honestly, I'm
not asking you to delete your account. I'm not judging you if you spend 8-12+ hours a day on facebook because you are most likely judging yourself on that one. What I am offering is a different way to look at something. I feel like it's my job to ruffle some feathers a bit every once in a while because when we're all ruffled up and fired up and feeling saucey we make changes. Changes are good. Changes are healthy. Changes are necessary. But that doesn't mean I don't feel like the black sheep over here or the lone wolf of the mom's blog world. "Hey ladies, am I right? Can I get a retweet over here?! Woop! Woo-- Oh, you all went home? That's cool..." Crickets.
11. I think I could possibly be anti-social on some level. I'm not a good "mom's clubber/playdater" kinda person in real life either. My family marches to the beat of our own drum (
as documented here) and we find that doesn't usually fit into any type of early morning schedule (or any schedule actually) that most mom's club type groups fit into. We've tried oh-so-many times to make a group like that work over the 6+ year span I've been a mom and it just doesn't work. It never has. I don't know about you, but I find it really hard to plan things too far in advance because my kids are in such different places in their own lives right now that I never know "where" we'll be at that exact day and time. It's usually in our jammies playing at home with our wooden trains, legos or our Calico Critters. I'm cool with that. Some of the ladies I've met are really nice and I'd love to hang out more, we just can't ever seem to make it work during mom's club hours. My bad. And some of the moms I've met are just like the social groups in high school where they spend most of the time at the picnic table locked into a gossipy chat with other moms about the moms who didn't come that day while their children are off killing each other in a Lord Of The Flies showdown on the playground. Inevitably you'll see a kid about to fall off the top of the slide or someone has another kid in a headlock pouring sand in their face and if you say something to the mom or call their attention away from their TMZ session then all of a sudden
YOU become the helicopter parent as they attempt to completely downplay what was just going on with their child when they weren't paying attention. Why are parents so easily put on the defensive by other parents? Instead of saying,
"Thank you for letting me know my 18 mo old was about to fall off the monkey bars!" you'll hear,
"he's fine. I saw him. I don't hover over him like that because I let him learn the hard way. He'll only do it once if he falls and gets hurt." I got a mom's attention once in Costco when I noticed her infant was licking the handle and the side of the dirty shopping cart like an ice cream. The mom was bending down getting something lower than the cart and I did what I would want anyone to do for me (fellow mom or not), let me know that my baby was having a germ sickle of a time on the nasty cart and she got totally offended.
"I saw her. She's fine" and then of course as she walked away she told the baby not to lick the dirty yucky cart because it has germs and she'll get sick. After you have interactions like this it makes you gun shy to help anyone out and I know where we lost sight in, "it takes a village to raise a child." However, we are firmly grounded in our convictions that we know everything and we know what is best in every way and you better not dare to give any help or advice when it's not asked because you'll get told off.
Am I still doing a top ten? Oh crap I am. OK sorry...
12. Most of the time I don't have a picture for a blog post and I have no desire to go create one or go searching for one either. Which now makes the article in no way "pinnable" I guess which makes it pretty much obsolete in our world today. The End.
13. I don't know the lingo for blogging or for the internet in general. I might as well be my husband's 90 year old grandmother. (
Sorry Nanny. Don't tweet that, OK? You have more followers than I do and I don't want anyone getting offended and deleting me. Love you!) So I'm not participating in any weekly mash ups, join ups, link ups, jam ups or tweet ups or you post mine and I'll post yours kinds of things. It seems like so many articles I read anymore are things that have been taken from another blog with a link to the original blog but no
real credit to the original author/poster. So if you are a lazy reader then it will be assumed that that person wrote it which they didn't and that's just not cool! I feel like I'm a detective on a manhunt or some modern day internet Robin Hood trying to find the original author of a blog post before I pin it in order to give the original person credit, and if I'm the one doing the pinning I'll always try to give the original blog credit in the caption of the post. I spend way too much time caring about fairness like that I guess. But I just can't stand the half-written post that offers vague commentary reminiscent of a high school book report on a book where they only read the jacket cover, then gives the link to the original post at the end that is always way more artistic and well thought out - all in the name of traffic and hits. And the thing that sucks is that the
Impostor Poster will always have a ton of hits and links and tweets and pins on the post they didn't even write and the original blogger won't hardly have any on the same post. Call me old fashioned but that isn't cool. It's lame and it's stealing someone else's well thought out idea and passing it off as your own in some way. This has gotten so bad I saw a post on a recipe where the lady supposedly "cooked" the thing herself yet used every single picture the original lady took and posted yet gave
no credit on each picture of course, she even copied the recipe verbatim complete with the original lady's comments about her family preferring it a certain way, and then at the very bottom in small print the Impostor Poster said here's the link to the original recipe! And yes, it got pinned, liked, shared and tweeted a gazillion times via the Impostor Poster's page. Even some pinner's have given the Impostor Poster full credit for the recipe. That is just lazy, irresponsible steal blogging. It's Stealogging.
15. Oh and I don't give away free shit. Mostly because I never get anything free to give away to readers. I think you have to actually have readers to give something away to them. My bad. I did give away a Starbuck's card once that I paid for myself but that was about it. If you want free shit go to the Pioneer Woman's blog. Free shit for days. Plus she has an awesome blog. Beautiful, creative, smart, artistic, funny, awesome and inspiring. And she's even on TV and in cookbooks for goodness sake! We don't have cable because we're on one income since I stay home so I have never seen any of her shows but I bet they are as fantastic as her blog. Utter perfection. Everything my lil blog ever dreamed of but isn't. In fact, you know what? Here you go. Go check it out for yourself.
The Pioneer Woman in all it's spectacular glory. You don't belong here. This post doesn't even have a picture for heaven's sake! Save yourself. In fact, eff this I'm heading over there now. I'll see you in a few.
OMG. Tears. Seriously. It's gorgeous.
Anyway, that is probably enough reasons why I'm a crappy mom's blogger if you haven't already been making your own mental list while reading this. Now for my next post...hmmm, should I write about renewing my license at the DMV and how I was the only person in the entire place of hundreds to offer up my seat to an old lady with a cane who was trying to prop herself up against the wall for the 2 hour wait or about my attempts at trying the save the world through teaching my children to have nice manners and do good deeds? Actually, those might be similar posts. Scratch that. Maybe I'll blog about my BBQ pork and coleslaw baked potato I ate the other night at Disneyland and it was so friggin' good it deserves it's own blog. You'll just have to come back I guess.
****About #1. Yes, that was a shameless plug of what I write on here to get more readers a reader. I admit it. I had to make myself just. stop. linking. to. so. many. posts.
So, I ran it by my editor, who is amazingly awesome btw and is totally my #1 fan and I asked her if #1 was too shameless, (because of course it was shameless but was it too shameless?) and she said, "You don't have any readers. It doesn't matter what the hell you do on here." And when I peered over her shoulder after I pretended to walk away I noticed that she was pinning things like crazy from The Pioneer Woman's blog and tweeting to everyone that they should just go there if they wanted to read anything of any quality. Then I wept and opened a box of French truffles.
Hark! I know what I'm going to write about!! I'll write about how I think I was a farmer/Little House on the Prairie type girl (but in France with lavender fields making goat cheese) in a former life! See, and you thought all that talk about The Pioneer Woman was pure snark and jealous sarcasm and it was quite the opposite actually. I read her blog more than I read my own.
BTW my complete and total facebook deletion is real and it's spectacular!
