Blog

And wasting time. I have a lot of important things to do, but since I had one of the worst days ever I’m doing this for now and I’ll do the important stuff when I’m so sleepy that I can hardly keep my eyes open and the baby is twenty minutes away from waking up to nurse.

The Queen of Carrots posted this Meme, and it’s probably been a year since I did one so I thought I’d copy her. It’s also a good time to post a Meme like this because we started our blog 3 years ago, next month. That’s craziness.

How did you start blogging?
Rob was reading a photo blog by a guy who was an ex-patriot in Japan and had a young family. Then Rob’s mom told us about all the confessional Lutheran blogs she’d been reading. We became interested in letting the whole world know all about us so we signed up with blogger.

Did you intend to be a blog w/a following? If so, how did you go about it?

We wanted a following when we began blogging. We linked to other blogs regularly, joined in on theological discussions that were running about the blogosphere. We wrote emotional pieces about our soon to be born first child. At one point in time we were getting more than a hundred hits a day. Then about six months after Olivia was born we quit blogging regularly, and Rob pretty much quit all together. Most of the readers were reading him, so our “following” started following others. I was sad at first, but I really don’t care any more.

What do you hope to achieve or accomplish with your blog? Have you been successful? If not, do you have a plan to achieve those goals?

I hope to keep my writing fingers limber so that when I can connect more that two brain cells, and sleep for more than four straight hours without feeding someone, I can write short stories that are as good as F. Scott Fitzgerald or Flannery O’Connor. I have four paragraphs and a basic premise for a short story, including character names and other details. That’s a little bit successful, but mostly my blog just gives me an excuse not to think about that short story when I’m really tired.
Has the focus of your blog changed since you started blogging? How?

Yes. When Rob was writing more often we had a higher standard for what was blog worthy. Anymore I just want to share something with who ever will read it so I am flying off the cuff a lot more often now. Plus, I’ve gotten more set in my ways, but less likely to make a big fuss about it. I think I argue more when I haven’t made up my mind, but now that I’m getting old and stubborn I’m not as interested in the ruckus.

What do you know now that you wish you’d known when you started?

That It’s not a good idea to fight with your old friends that have moved away over the internet. I haven’t talked to a few people, even online, that used to be very dear to me and I’m afraid it’s because the internet leaves little room for “agreeing to disagree.”

Do you make money with your blog?

No.

Does your immediate or extended family know about your blog? If so, do they read it? If not, why?

They do. In fact I think that they are the only people who actually read this blog anymore, excepting the few people who we made more intimate connections with and are reading to keep up with the family. Hi Mom, Dad, other Dad, Nina and Papa, Mina, Nana and Bunkle, the Uncles and Aunts, and the Stagers.

What two pieces of advice would you give to a new blogger?
1. Just keep writing until you find your blogging voice, and then just go with it.

2. Write even if no one comments. Blogging is more enjoyable if you post what you want, regardless of how people respond.

How did you come to name your blog?
We were constantly listening to Andrew Peterson’s album <i>Love and Thunder</i> which rhymes with Love and Blunder and it just seemed to fit the mood of a young married couple. It’s clever and it rolls off your tongue. I have come to think of Rob and I as “Love and Blunder” in tandem.

One of the reasons I wanted to buy an old house is for the history in the home. The imagined lives of its past inhabitants, wondering about the children growing here. Wondering about who had the house built.

In this house some of those questions were easily answered. We have the original blue prints and the original work order for the home, passed down by the 4 previous owners of this home. Almost nothing in our house has been changed except the kitchen has been updated and the basement finished.

We also know quite a good deal about the original owner of the house. Mr. Sittle and his wife were the first people to build on this street in 1926. They moved here from a farm and brought some of the pieces of their old barn with them, which are still in the garage. Mr. Sittle was a milk man for a local milk company, he drove a horse drawn milk wagon up and down Market Street, when it was still a brick road. He was driving milk for that company still, when they started delivering the milk in trucks.

Our next door neighbors moved into their home when the Sittles were retired. They tell us all about how Mr. Sittle would bring a lawn chair out into the front yard just to watch my neighbor’s children play in the yard. My neighbor, Bob, recollects Mr. Sittle with a look in his eye like he’s remembering a long lost friend, or a close family member.

Now our neighbors are reaching retirement and Bob comes out and chats with Olivia and tickles Elise and pretty much acts like an on site grandfather. I can see that he is pretty satisfied in becoming the neighborhood replacement for old Mr. Sitttle.

about something very close to my heart: the normalization of childbirth.

I have had two very different births. Olivia’s birth was a nightmare and Elise’s birth was beautiful. It wasn’t a homebirth, but it would have been if the laws in Ohio would permit me to have a transfer in the case of an emergency to a doctor that I knew.

Look up your state’s birth laws, unless you live in New Mexico you will be astonished.

Be educated on natural childbirth (as in take a Bradley class, or something not offered in a hospital), have a midwife, a doula, or a husband/best friend/coach to help you deliver as naturally is possible. One thing people don’t know about birth is that one intervention leads to another, even something as seemingly harmless as continuous fetal monitoring.

Protect yourself and your baby.