Intro to Mommyblogging: Are you ready for this?

I'm a mom who blogs. My family reads it, I hope my boys do when they get older. I started blogging because we have family all over the country and friends in different parts of the world and it was a way to (still) keep in touch. When I had my second child it turned into a way to keep writing and stay connected with the outside world because motherhood can be very isolating. When we needed money I got a job as a columnist and received other jobs because of it and now my blogging takes care of our very expensive (my son is severely asthmatic) small business health insurance, among other things. It serves my needs and ultimately saved my family's butt during a tough time.

Dana
Mamalogues.com ( http://www.mamalogues.com )
Mamalogues in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch ( http://www.stltoday.com/mamalogues )
Pop Mama ( http://www.stltoday.com/popmama )
Since Eve on ClubMom ( http://sinceeve.clubmom.com/ )

Some days I certainly know what you mean. I think this idea of being a "blogebrity" is extremely interesting as blogging becomes more popular and as more of us achieve some kind of notoriety on either local or national levels, or both.

How to handle it? It certainly does make you think twice about what you're writing. And there's pressure, too. But perhaps these questions are for the Advanced Mommybloggers class...

Congratulations on the piece in the paper! Sounds exciting.

Mary
BlogHer Contributing Editor, Mommy & Family ( http://www.blogher.com/topic/mommy-family )
Mom Writes ( http://marytsao.blogspot.com )

"Several of Miss Zoot's commenters thought that potential mommybloggers should think about and answer questions like these before they take up shop on the Internet."

I think this is incredibly good advice. When I started my blog--where I write, often and openly, about my sons and about how our family is coping with my oldest son's ASD diagnosis--I never in a million years expected that ANYONE would read what I wrote; I certainly never thought anyone I KNEW would read it.

My parents read my site. My in-laws read it. My girlfriends read it. And recently, I was profiled in a local magazine, so now people my husband works with are reading it and people I know only from the park or the pool are reading it, and . . .

You just never know.

My site is ABOUT my children, but I am not writing it FOR them. I am writing it for ME, and when I write about my sons it is not with the intention of embarassing them or preserving their childhood, but rather to save this moment of being their mother, because I know that other women are raising children like mine and are struggling--like I am--to get their footing as parents. But if I had known, in the beginning, that ALL THESE PEOPLE would read what I was writing . . .

Well, I don't know where I would be today. But quite possibly not blogging.

set of questions, I might have to do that myself.

I see my blog as something for both me and my daughter. Not only does it chronicle her growth as a person, I know someday she'll be able to read it and learn more about me as well.

Maybe I should answer Zoot's questions. Sounds like fun!

Christina
A Mommy Story ( http://amommystory.blogspot.com )

I sure hope Nicholas reads the blog someday and thinks, "Man, my Mom is weird. That's awesome."

;)

Family Living; Hatfield Style ( http://www.thejhatfields.org/blog )
Jenna

K,
I think like you do. I hate to say it because it sounds morbid, but if I died tomorrow I would be content knowing that I have left my children stories that they can use to create--or recreate--memories.

That's actually a good way to approach any blog entry: If I died tomorrow, would I want this to be my last entry? I'm not talking about striving for perfection, but being mindful of my message.

Mary
BlogHer Contributing Editor, Mommy & Family ( http://www.blogher.com/topic/mommy-family )
Mom Writes ( http://marytsao.blogspot.com )

For me blogging is a diary. I can look back at pictures from her birthday or a day out and revisit those moments.
The blog also helps keeping Grandma in New Zealand, uncle in the States and other friends and family members all over the globe updated.

My daughter is too young to be told about it but when she is ready to nunderstand I am sure she will love it.

You know, I didn't start my blog with this in mind, but the rubber storage bins full of unfiled, unsorted and undocumented baby photos and mementos no longer haunt me...

Now I can just point to my blogfiles, and say, "Scrapbook?? Scrapbook this.

In all seriousness, I will be travelling some this fall without my children, and this blog is helping to offset the irrational panic I usually have in the face of being separated from them. I know that if anything terrible were to happen to me, they would have a very real and dimensional snapshot of who I am and what I care about.

I don't write to them, or even for them, directly, but I think it is a gift to them all the same.

Look at dooce's ( http://www.dooce.com )beautiful letters to her daughter. What heirloom can possibly compare? (and Leta, they more than make up for alll the other stuff, so be sure and cut mom some slack when you are old enough to be mortified.)

k., Notes to Self ( http://www.k1969.blogspot.com )