i heart blogging

Like all good love stories,

I was in love with blogging long before I realised.

And by the time I had realised

I was in so deep

that there was no getting out of the love again.

I had read blogs for years.

I had always enjoyed wasting away the evenings 

having a good browse around some of my old favourites.

I loved how open, honest and personal the writers were.

They shared so much of themselves in their blogs.

Through reading them 

I could dip into other places,

I could see different things.

Very late on in my pregnancy

I came across my first mummy blog.

The mummy in question was also pregnant

and though she was a few weeks behind me,

but it was still lovely to read about her feelings and experiences

as she approached becoming a mother for the first time.

I was actually quite envious that she had thought to document her pregnancy in that way.

I hadn't even taken photos of my bump as it progressed,

let alone thought to write down how I felt about things.

And then the little guy came along.

And as I sat awake at funny hours of the night feeding him,

I found myself searching out other mummy bloggers.

I looked forward to getting my baby latched on 

so I could get down to the business of blog reading.

As I'm sure every parent will understand,

those early weeks pass by 

in a haze of tiredness and visitors and confusion and love.

And all of a sudden you tiny newborn is reaching that first milestone,

they're a month old

and you're not sure where the time has gone.

And you want to stop time,

or at least slow it down a little,

because it's all going by so fast,

and you're so worried that you're so tired and confused and in love

that you'll miss things,

or forget things,

or simply not appreciate them enough.

So I started to make a note of all the tiny little milestones

and when they happened.

I started to file the many hundreds of photos into date order

so I could see how much my little guy was growing and changing.

And then somewhere along the line I decided that I'd write it all down,

a weekly diary of what he had been up to,

with pictures of him doing the different things he had done.

And without even thinking about it

or making the conscious decision to write in that way,

I wrote the diary to my little guy, my beautiful boy.

As the newborn haze of the babymoon started to clear,

I realised that the blogs I read

had in many ways inspired my own desire to write.

So turning my weekly ramblings into a blog didn't seem such a bad idea.

Of course it's grown since the early days.

I never expected anyone to read my blog,

because it wasn't really for anyone else

apart from me and my beautiful boy.

But as the readers increased,

so did the amount that I wrote.

Which brings me back to the love of blogging.

Or rather my love of writing.

And my love of photography.

My love of recording things to keep forever.

The very best thing that has happened to me as a result of blogging

is that I sit back and enjoy my boy more.

I take his picture more.

I take notice of the changes in him

and most importantly I record them.

I love that I can use my blog as a record of his life.

That I can use it to find out when he first smiled,

and when he first slept through,

and when he first went to a party,

or went on a bouncy castle,

or went swimming.

Blogging has given me the gift of memories.

Or rather, the ability to actually recall them.

Don't get me wrong,

the blogging community I've found,

the comments and compliments I've received,

the freebies we've gained,

the passion for writing,

the love of photography;

they've all been great things that have happened as a result of my blogging.

But the ability to record

and remember

my beautiful boy. . .

. . . well that's what it's all about for me.

This was written in response to the BritMums Blog Prompt.
You can see the rest here.