It was sort-of-a-last-minute decision (attending the conference that is), and I’m so glad I did. Heading down to Nashville for a weekend filled with all kinds of friendly and hilarious women gave me a much-needed break from frigid Milwaukee. Just my luck though – the temperature jumped up to 55 degrees while away. Of course.
The sessions were mostly made up of anecdotal success stories by bloggers within the community. So while there wasn’t a lot of fresh or cutting edge info to mull over, I couldn’t feel at all disappointed because the true value of the event was found in new friendships that were formed over virgin Blisstinis and Little Debbie snacks. It was the kindness and ingenuity that inspired me.
It didn’t hurt that during Jen Lancaster’s closing keynote she managed to effortlessly weave in a shameful guilty pleasure of mine.
Admittedly there were two things that caught me off guard:
1. I sat and watched a screening for an upcoming Yanni world tour (it was a surprise put on by one of the sponsors – and good thing because I would never have intentionally showed up, let alone woken up at 7am for that). I should say, I do not fit the Yanni demographic at all – and I’m still not entirely sure if I was just deliriously tired or if I actually did enjoy the screening.
2. Last year at BlogHer ’08 I frequently felt a bit out-of-place among all the babywearing mommies. So, being all wobbly and pregnant actually gave me a greater sense of belonging in the crowd this weekend. I suddenly realized how being a human incubator quickly amasses a new kind of street cred among other women… we’re able to connect / reflect based on the shared and deeply profound life experience of welcoming a new life into the world. Plus, people like Steph prove that you can rock the baby and still be a hot mama, all at the same time.
So I know I haven’t added in all my content (especially videos) just yet .. but huge progress has been made thanks to the great team at cre8d-design.com!
In the coming days and weeks this will definitely transform into the hub of my online activity – a centralized location I’ve been needing for months years.
Thanks for dropping by!
Now that I’ll be heading into the 3rd trimester next week we’re trying to answer some of those first few questions we’ll face … and since we’re having a boy, one big one is whether or not to get him snipped.
We’re going to such great lengths to have a natural birth in our home, and yet, we’ve had some trouble coming to a consensus on this aspect of our birth plan – clearly circumcision is not the way nature intended, but we don’t want to set our son up to face ridicule as an adolescent or adult.
Doing an informal survey among friends we’ve both been surprised to hear that most people have advising us against it, and so maybe we’re wrong – perhaps the societal tide is turning against this practice.
At this stage we just want to inform ourselves and hear from others, so that when the time comes in a few months to make that choice we do it with eyes wide open.
(to read YouTube video comments you have to double-click on the video and go to the site directly)
