A Shift in Focus

Remember me?

I have been struggling with the direction of this blog lately. I love to write, I love my girls, and they are an endless source of inspiration. But I was starting to dread coming up with material that would please everyone and be entertaining but would also not cross privacy lines. I don't want my kids to hate me later for exposing their every feeling and phase for the world to see. I don't want to feel like a reporter of my life, spending my time angling for that perfect photo instead of getting in there with the family and making a memory together that we remember in our minds rather than on a computer screen. I feel endlessly guilty about this.

Then on the flip side, I get too personal and probably overshare. Not the gory details necessarily, but bare bones emotion and complicated toddler feelings and behaviors of my girls. Sometimes I picture them in 10 years, reading this and being angry or embarrassed at the fact that I have spilled supremely personal details of our daily lives out into the world without their permission. And then, again, I feel guilty.

Sometimes I get a little paranoid and worry my oversharing will result in a serious problem, like giving a stalker material or allowing internet sickos to use my girls' photos in whatever way Photoshop allows them to. It happens. Not often, but it happens.

I realize my blog audience is fairly small at this point, so you might be wondering what I am so worried about. But these words and photos go out into the universe and I can't control where they end up. Even if I deleted my blog, the content is pinned on Pinterest, liked on Facebook and shared on other sites and that's all a bell I can't unring. Raising little ones at this time when social media and mommy blogs are equating strangers and random acquaintances with close friends and family is sort of uncharted territory, and I'm not so sure I want to explore it.

So I think for now, I will move the focus from more personal parenting stories via my children's follies to other baby and kid topics... DIY projects, preschooler activities, cool baby products, stuff like that. I do want you guys to like me, but more more than that, I want my kids to like me, you know? I know all you parents out there will understand. :)