Mommy Blogging - " How I Got Started"

Hi. My name is Debbie, and I am proud to be a Mommy blogger. If you are reading this, you probably are too. I’d like to welcome you to my 400th post. Yes, that is 4-0-0. Four Hundred. Four-Zero-Zero, and if I knew any language other than slang English or could remember roman numerals, I would translate 400 into something more interesting. Alas, I don’t, so you are stuck with 4-0-0. So pedestrian, I know. Anyway, in preparing for my big 400th post, I knew I wanted to talk about the evolution of my blog and blogging in general, but it turned out to be 5 pages, single spaced in a Word Doc. Uh. Hmm. Not gonna work. You all can’t be that interested in me to stick around in one sitting for that nonsense.

But then it happened!

While dipping my feet into a vat of HOT WAX during a mani/pedi this morning, I had a brainstorm! I would break down my observations and thoughts on blogging into different topics that I know all of us think about or have thought about or don’t want to admit that we have thought about. Then while getting the hair ripped off my eyebrows, I realized the genius in my idea. If I do this as a series, I will have enough blog blather for a week! Oh clap, clap. I'm so smart. Then I realized that my eyebrows were burning and grabbed a mirror to make sure I didn’t look like the Joker.

Betcha didn’t know that I’d been blogging long enough to have 400 posts. Well, I do, and I have. Eons ago in blogger time, ya know way back in February, 2007, I started with a simple blogger template and a blog titled “Woven and Spun.” Today, I have a customized blog with a title that is the brain child of my daughter, and the whole thing looks and sounds nothing like it did 15 months ago. Here’s my story:

Prior to December 2006, “blog” had a negative connotation to me because the only knowledge I had of a blog was reading the uproarious stories in "The Washington Post" about a young woman who worked on Capitol Hill whose so called “blog’ became infamous for chronicling her (use your imagination) escapades with certain Hill staffers. Blogs eww ick. Blogs baaad. Blogs evil. Wait. Blog? What exactly is that? So I looked it up back then and learned that it’s the words web and log smooshed together to make weblog or blog as we know it today. (Can’t you imagine those tech boys dreaming this stuff up in their free time? Yeah, I make fun of them now. But the likes of Mr. Google and Mr. Ipod/Apple/Mac are laughing all the way to the bank driving their Ferrari’s, wearing their rolexes, and getting ready to jet off to the island they own in the jet they own.) Then I started reading my friend Courtney's blog which turned out to be an electronic journal of their lives and made for interesting reading. After about six weeks of reading her story, I had my light bulb moment, only this time hot wax was not involved. “Hey, I can do that! And what a great way to keep friends and family updated with pictures and stories of the kids.” So 15 seconds later I signed up on Blogger, and another 30 seconds later I was the proud owner of my own blog. All in under a minute? Really? Just like that? Yup, just like that. Gulp. Now what?

So, I titled my brand spanking new blog on a day I was particularly reflective and titled it “Woven and Spun” after my favorite Nichole Nordeman CD. I felt that title would be illustrative of our lives as it is so carefully “woven and spun” by our Heavenly Father. Then I did what all of you who blog probably did when you first started, I announced to my friends and family that I had set up this way cool website as a way to keep them current with the kids and our happenings including pics and stories. Yup, here's the URL, folks. All you have to do is click on it. Yippee! A built in audience! Seemed logical to reach out to them, after all, they were the intended audience. Right? Then something happened that I didn’t expect...


Meanwhile, how and when did you get started blogging?