362nd Friday Blog Roundup
The Creme de la Creme list burst open with dozens of entries within the first hour. Last year, on the first day, we had 27 entries. This year, we had that within the first few hours. I have high hopes for hitting 400+ posts. I want to thank everyone who has already spread word about the list via Twitter, Facebook, and blog posts. Thank you to everyone who Stumbled it. Because the list is closing early this year, if we don’t spread word now, many people who only find out about the Creme when the list goes up in January will miss out.
The first prize has also been given out. Mommy Odyssey hit the current 18th slot on the list (since people will be shifted back to make room for the new people in the 2nd, 4th, and 6th slot. Don’t know what I’m talking about? Read the Creme de la Creme post). She has won the $100 Amazon gift card provide by Attain Fertility (thank you, Attain!). Slot #36 will be contacted soon.
For everyone who thinks they don’t have a “best” post this year, I challenge you with this. Are you completely willing to delete your blog? Every single last post from 2011? No? Then you technically have one you can submit. It’s the one you’d save if you could keep just one. It may not be spectacular. It may just be an update on your lining thickness. But it means something to you. And therefore, it means something to us.
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We will be having the Grateful Said, and that will launch within the next week or so. So go look for good comments — again, don’t get hung up on the word “best” but instead think about a particularly nice comment that came exactly when you needed it. Personally, I am looking for what was a difficult post to write and publicly thanking the first person who commented since they set my heart at ease.
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The twins are working on an autobiography project at school. They need to bring in a baby picture and a current picture to kick off the book. Printing out a current picture was easy — I went into the computer and grabbed one of each from a hiking trip we took this summer. The baby picture wasn’t quite as easy. I started with actual baby pictures, and then I started to get worried that the other kids in the class would (1) be freaked out to see a two pound baby covered in wires and tubing or (2) that the twins would be made fun of because they had been two pound babies covered in wires and tubing. So I skipped forward a few months to when they had some meat on their bones, but that felt false, as if I was editing history. They were two pound babies; why should we pretend otherwise? So I went back to the earlier pictures in the NICU and started the whole internal monologue several more times.
I finally went with some pictures from when they were 5 months.
Even though I think there is a lot of beauty in this:
And now the blogs…
But first, second helpings of the posts that appeared in the open comment thread last week as well as the week before. In order to read the description before clicking over, please return to the open thread:
- “Time” (This Was Supposed to be My Symphony)
- “The Legacy of an Adopted Child” (I Believe in Miracles)
- “My Son Processes a New Layer of His Adoptedness” (Write Mind Open Heart)
- “Notes from a Dragon Mom” (NY Times)
Okay, now my choices this week.
It Is What It Is (Or Is It?) has a difficult to read post this week about being abandoned for the second time by her mother. I was drawn to this post for the sheer rawness; the eloquence of her explanation. And I love this point: “Yet, I am still standing. And, as things come to a head and the crazy swirls around me, I wonder how that is possible. I credit the many friends in my chosen family who mentored me and ushered me through the toughest years.”
Getting There also had a difficult post about death, namely, the fact that death is part of her child’s adoption story. She explains, “I’ve promised my boy that he is with us forever – and that’s a promise for a two year old. But at some point in the future my boy is going to realise that forever isn’t going to happen. If his birth father can die, doesn’t that mean that his mummy and daddy might die?” The ending of the post is moving, and you’re forewarned that you should bring Kleenex to read it.
Lastly, ending on a happy note, A Half Baked Life has a post that asks an excellent question: when was the last time you treated yourself as the honoured guest? My internal answer was… pretty much never. Which begs the question: why don’t a bake a freakin’ cake for myself, declare myself important enough to warrant the same treatment I give my guests? It’s a great post about being compassionate to yourself with a recipe to boot.
The roundup to the Roundup: The Creme de la Creme is off to a great start (and please keep spreading the word). The Grateful Said will kick off soon. A glimpse into my internal monologue over a school project. And lots of great posts to read. So what did you find this week? Please use a permalink to the blog post (written between October 14th and October 21st) and not the blog’s main url. Not understanding why I’m asking you what you found this week? Read the original open thread post here.
24 comments
LOL…I think I had my eyeballs glued to your blog, eager to find out when the CDLC came through….
Congratulations to Mommy Odyssey.
Somehow I find CDLC way easier to do than Grateful Said. We know the weight of our own words, but I also know the weight for other people’s words and if truth be told, I am thankful for all of them.
In a completely narcissistic move, I want to add this link for the next Blog RoundUp –
http://saintaltrove.blogspot.com/2011/10/fragmented-observation.html
I was pleasantly surprised at the number of adoption-related blogs that were in the round-up this week. I have just recently started to consider/contemplate the idea of adopting as a way of starting a family. I know that I have a lot of thinking and research to do and talking with my husband, but I think seeing all of these posts today was a small way of the universe saying that it is okay to move on for IF in this way.
Oh, and I wanted to put this out there for sharing next week even though it has nothing to do with adoption. I love the short and simpleness of it:
http://jennandtonica.com/2011/10/if-blogging-were-tweeting/
Have you asked your children wich picture they want to take with them? I would print two pictures from both periods and let them chose…..If they are comfortable with the nicu one go for it. There is nothing to be ashamed of is there? And for the scary part. A classmate of my son brought a picutre of his brother who was born still to school when he was five. Tehy were talking aobut brothers and sissters and this is the only brother he has. Nobody is spooked and now five years later my son remembers the brother…Children can handle a lot!
When someone says baby pictures, I would assume that a picture from any point in babyhood is fine. I used to take in pictures of me up to about two when I was asked for baby pictures in school.
I wanted to submit a very funny post about pregnancy, vivid dreams, and suppositories.
http://justusandthecat.blogspot.com/2011/10/i-havent-done-anything-to-your-bum.html
That’s a beautiful picture. But I’d go with what Mijk and Jen said – any age is fine, and let the kids choose. They have a sense of what other kids can handle. (Also, overthink things much? They’re probably just looking for face shots to see how much you look like yourself as you age.)
There is great beauty, and great love, in that picture.
I’m so psyched! 🙂
That pic from the NICU is beautiful. Hopefully the twins will have a similar project again in a couple of years when their friends are old enough to understand.
For second helpings, Built in Birth Control has an absolutely amazing post about her lost twins:
http://www.builtinbirthcontrol.com/2011/10/revelation.html
That’s a beautiful picture!
I love the NICU pic too. Thanks so much for everything you do – I find this community to be so amazing, and so needed. Have a great weekend!!
That picture is amazingly beautiful.
Love that picture.
I agree with Mijk and Jen, let your kids choose which picture they want to take.
This post at the 2 Week Wait was amazing…
http://the2weekwait.blogspot.com/2011/10/calling-all-infertiles-i-want-to-hear.html
The blogger, Jay, was responding to a comment that basically said “Your pain isn’t as bad as mine because you are pregnant…you haven’t suffered like me”. Jay’s response was fabulous, and the comments were amazing as well.
Just submitted mine. : ) I love sitting down with my computer on New Year’s Day & starting to read the Creme!
Thanks for the nod, Mel. I find it very difficult, as an adult adoptee, to write honestly & openly, about my relationship with my mother. It isn’t socially acceptable to talk about not having a good relationship with one’s parents. The on-line support I’ve received is invaluable and goes a long way toward my healing.
This was a really good post
http://www.mommywantsvodka.com/with-all-the-love-in-the-world
I love the NICU picture, too. But it’s not an easy picture to see for an elementary school kid, I suspect.
And: you TOTALLY deserve a cake. 🙂 I am so psyched to be among the featured posts this week! (*beaming*) Thank you, Mel!!
For second helpings: I really enjoyed the three-sided post from Esperanza (http://esperanzasays.wordpress.com/2011/10/16/disappointment-and-frustration/) and Jjiraffe (http://jjiraffe.wordpress.com/2011/10/17/rashoman-the-ill-fated-blogger-sleepover/) and BodegaBliss (bodegabliss.wordpress.com/2011/10/17/when-blogger-friendships-become-real-life-friends/) about an ill-fated blogger sleepover and the quick assumptions we make about being “in” or “out” based on our past lives. It seems like an interesting follow-up to your post about female friendship from a while back.
There are NICU photos of Burrito and Tamale that are among my all-time favorites of them, tubes and wires and all.
If it was just a before-and-after photo project, I think that any baby photos would do, but NICU photos actually seem particularly germane to an autobiography project.
I just want to chime in with some of the above: Kids will surprise you. Granted Bella has lived with pictures of the wires and tubes, but when we take her to the annual service where they show 100s of pix of sick kids in far worse shape than ours, it’s like she sees right it all and down the core, and comments on their outfit or their dog. It’s pretty remarkable. It might start a conversation about “did it hurt?” which would end, “I don’t remember!” and that’s an important lesson about babies, too.
Just a thought. I love that picture of you.
That picture is so beautiful
I want to submit another jjiraffe post for Second Helpings:
http://jjiraffe.wordpress.com/2011/10/23/fighting-wasps-with-rubber-swatters/
This is a lovely, thoughtful post about the ups and downs of parenting.
And that photo is indeed lovely.
Holy crap I completely forgot about the Creme.
I think I would have chosen the pic you have here. I don’t remember being freaked out by the prospect of childhood friends or classmates having been born prematurely. I guess I never saw the newborn pics, but I do remember descriptions. Maybe others picked on them and I never noticed.
I have one this week, despite my general slackness at blogging:
http://bigpandme.wordpress.com/2011/10/16/the-fat-friend/
Bea