Looking back, looking forward
The actual anniversary slipped by me, but last week and change marked my three-year anniversary of blogging here at Babble. Wowza! How the time doth fly. Hard to believe that when I first started writing here, it was about breastfeeding and sleep schedules and watching the girls’ unique personalities devlop. And now, three years later, I’m writing about….well….dinnertime and bedtime routines and how interesting it is to watch the girls’ unique personalities develop. Plus ca change….
I’ve actually been digging back into old posts a lot these days as I work on my book — “researching” my own life, as it were. Life moves so quickly and babies grow into children so fast; I don’t think I’d be able to remember half as much as I’m remembering if I didn’t have my own blog posts to jog my memory.
It’s fun (and a little bit sad) to trip down memory lane, looking at pictures of the girls when they were just chubby little babies, and reading about their first big milestones. It’s also fun to relive particularly memorable moments of blogging here, like my psuedo blog war with my friend Steve Almond (which a lot of people — to my amazement — thought was real), and the first time I wrote openly about my depression.
It’s also got me thinking a lot about the future of this blog — and the possible repercussions of blogging about your kids in general. When I started blogging here, I didn’t really have a sense of how long I would want to do it. “Baby” Squared suggests a certain shelf life. And frankly, I thought I might get tired of blogging after a year or two. But I didn’t. And at this point, it’s hard to imagine not writing here. Where would I get all my parenting advice — not to mention reassurance that I’m not / my kids aren’t, in fact, crazy?
And now, if don’t blog at least until my book comes out — which will most likely be May, 2012 — my publishers would probably kill me. The girls will be five then. Five!!
Beyond that, I guess, it’s up to me. To blog or not to blog?
Certainly, there may come a time when I just don’t feel inspired to write on a regular basis about my kids / being a parent anymore and want to spend the time on other projects instead. The more complicated issue for me is how the girls would feel about my blogging once they’re old enough to really understand what it is, and what I’m doing. And regardless of how much longer I keep at it, how will they feel when they’re able to go back and read what I wrote?
Will they feel exploited? Embarrassed? Will they be hurt or confused by anything I’ve written here? Will they feel like I’ve used them for my own gain somehow? (Not like I’m getting rich off blogging here by any stretch of the imagination, but it has helped my writing career in various ways.)
There is plenty about my children and my experiences as a parent that I don’t share here. I try very hard not to write anything that I can imagine the girls being upset about five or ten or thirty years from now. (If by then robots haven’t taken over the planet and replaced the Internet with a series of tubes.) And I try to respect their privacy. (Yes, I have written an awful lot about their poop. But believe me, I could go into much more detail.) But I do share a lot.
Sometimes I think maybe I should have given the girls aliases back when I started blogging. Or just stuck to “E” and “C.” But I felt like doing that would make it harder for me to write honestly and from the heart; like it would put up a barrier between me and readers. But maybe I’m just rationalizing my exhibitionist tendencies. Ha!
Anyway, it’s going to be interesting to see what happens when the generation of
blogged-about children comes of age. I can just see it now: support
groups, lawsuits, tell-all memoirs, blogs about being blogged about….
My hope is that my girls will see this blog as evidence of my engagement in their lives — my desire to document and reflect on my experiences as a mother and also celebrate (albeit in a very public way) my love for them. This would be a very mature and measured reaction, however. Before they get there, I may be looking at a couple of very pissed off teenagers.
The girls at approx five months — can you tell who’s who?
* * *
fan of Baby Squared on Facebook for updates when new posts are
published,
bonus material and that whole virtual sense of community thing.
Join my mailing list for very
occasional
news about my writing elsewhere — including my novel, EDEN LAKE, to be
published in 2011 by Last Light Studio, and my memoir, BABY SQUARED,
about the
first three years of parenting twins, to be published in 2012 by St.
Martin’s
Press.
Elsa on the right – Clio on the left… Funny – Ellis is still just a month younger than the girls at that age
I hope you’ll keep blogging – other than the fact that I don’t have twins, it is a great peek into what is coming up for us with Ellis…and whatever sibling may eventually, not yet, join him.
Must.Keep.Blogging. I depend on your stories and insight to prep me for the next phases with my now, finally, 2 year old twins (yay 2! What a difference from the first year). Oh, and I could totally tell which baby is which girl. My girls are blond/blue and brunette/brown too. It’s funny though how sometimes I look at a picture and need to do a double take to see which kid it is. And finally, I want to nibble on those cheeks of theirs. I love chubby baby cheeks. My poor girls.
I don’t see how your daughters would be angry or embarrassed about events they wouldn’t remember themselves, because it wouldn’t resurrect negative feelings as embarrassment or shame does.
My parents don’t have loads of evidence of our twin baby/toddler existence, and since I have no memory of it, the few scrapbooks are pretty special- particularly the who’s who game and the individual stories that define each girl. Most mothers aren’t passonate writers, and their children miss out on having a chronicle like the one you are making.
For perspective, I’d check out art photographer Sally Mann’s photos of her children. She really walks the line between posterity/exploitation, and her images are beautiful.
I can’t think of anything you’ve written you should worry about. The love and respect shine through on every virtual page. Who could resent that?
I can imagine their embarrassment as teenagers, since teenagers are perpetually under the impression that everything their parents do is so uncool and really just an effort at sabotaging their efforts to be “cool” and “popular”. (“Mother! How dare you publicly write that I poop! What if *insert current crush’s name here* reads this and realizes that I poop?! I’ll never be able to show my face in school again!”)
But, wait until they’re older. They won’t be able to get enough of this stuff, especially when they have their own lives and find out they’re pregnant. All of a sudden, the fact that you wrote so much down, instead of relying on “Oh, I’ll remember that in 20-or-so years”, will be so worth it.
I’m currently asking my mom about how she and dad disciplined me, wondering how she dealt with pregnancy and post-partum, how she managed to raise a child on such a shoe-string budget, etc. now that my husband and I are having such Baby Fever lately. Unfortunately, all she can answer me with is “I don’t remember, it just sort of all worked out.”
By the way, Elsa’s on the right. I can’t get over how much she looks like Grandma!
I’ve been blogging for the last five years. My girls are teenagers and they love it. Like you, I’m careful not to put anything too personal or anything they would be uncomfortable with. They don’t feel exploited in any way. I have a feeling your girls will feel the same way.
You could always remove the blog when they come of age to be embarrassed by it. I know it would still remain out there to a point, but someone would really have to dig to get it. I think it is great that you took the time to write it all down. I feel like such a bad mom sometimes because I don’t do picture albums, scrapbooks, memory books or journals about my kids. Makes me feel like a slacker. On the other hand I do have a very good memory so I will try to rely on that. I know that is not nearly as good, but it will have to do.
I love reading your blog and I feel like I know you and the girls. Don’t stop.
3 years… wow, time has flown. And that is how long you’ve been my internet twin-mom support. I think blogging is changing the world (yep, I said world) and for your readers like me, you’ve affected my mommy experience, my struggle with depression and my renewed passion for writing. How’s that for a reason to keep blogging?
Since I have been very bad about keeping up with Cooper’s “baby” book, I hope he will look upon any entry related to him in my blog as part of his personal history, not as an effort to embarrass or mortify him.
Of course they’ll be embarrassed at some point by your blogging – when they’re about 12-13 years old, everything you say or do will embarrass them.
But then they’ll get over it. And when they go away to college, they’ll be home for a weekend and they’ll sit down with you and beg you to tell them about how you used to blog about them when they were babies. And they’ll be so happy you have this treasure trove of memories prepared for them
They still each look the same! Clio on the left and Elsa on the right. I could tell immediately.
I think when they are old enough to know what it means to be blogged about, there may not be many kids who weren’t blogged. I can’t imagine any reason for them to be embarrassed by what they did as babies/toddlers.