2nd Annual Blogiversary Poem Part 1

For my newer readers you may not even know that I built this blog by writing on a different topic each week. This concept fell to the wayside when my newborn came into the picture, but I am ready to get it going again. Last year I wrote a 5 part poem with each line reflecting the topic for all 52 weeks that I had been blogging and it was such a hit! Okay, fine it was actually a huge pain in the butt to pull off and only one person commented (thank you very much Becky). But what can I say, I am a gluten for punishment and I've decided to make it an annual tradition. So here is a rhyming recap of the past 52 weeks of blogging.

On week one I wrote a long poem, a lot like what I am doing right now

Then I wrote about hospitality and all of the people that came to our house

Week 3 was a pregnancy update, when I shared the first photo of my new baby!

The next topic was kid’s movies. Do I watch too many of these? Well, maybe.

Week 5 was all about Z turning 2, He got his first haircut courtesy of mama

Week 6 I talked about TV like the whole Taylor Swift and Kanye West drama

I then read a book called belly laughs, and used pregnancy as an excuse to be lazy

On Week 8 we were recovering from Z surgery and life was just a little bit crazy

It was week 9 when we guessed the baby’s sex even though most of us were wrong

The next week I shared my mom life crisis and some of things I do all day long


To Be Continued...

New Site, New Look

This time last week I found out that my blog had disappeared and I haven't written much since then other than a couple of woe is me posts. I have been doing a lot behind the scenes though and I think I just about ready to go. Here are some of the changes that have transpired-

I purchased a new domain name
I purchased the old blog name and I am still working on getting an automatic redirect (thank you Crystal)
I made minor modifications like changing my profile and the logo (or header) shown above
I added new static pages, like about me, about the messies, and blogroll! My old about me page had this supposedly current photo,

but a lot has changed since then,

so it was definitely time for an update.

In January of 2009 I changed my background and said that it was "very temporary"

a year and a half later I went ahead and finally changed it.

I had bookmarked this background sometime ago. Green is my favorite color, plus I love "vintagey" stuff. The 75 cents tickets represents my frugality, and the tattered edges represent my messiness, so I thought it was a good fit.

There are still lots of little things I am working on, but it will have to do for now. This whole blog loss fiasco has been an unwanted challenge, but I believe all things happen for a reason and it's caused me to do a lot of cleaning up around here, and needless to say cleaning up does not come naturally for me. Hence the NAME!

What's In A Name?

If you haven't heard about what happened to my domain name read yesterday's post, although today I have a lot more information on how it all went down. I took a crash coarse on what my rights are as a website owner and learned a lot in one day. You generally have a 30 day grace period after a website expires before it is allowed to be turned over to a 3rd party. In my case with Enom it is 19 days, either way I knew I should have a right to my blog name!

My domain name was purchased through Google apps, and although it was next to impossible to figure out how to get a hold of someone, when I did (via googleclients@enom.com) they were helpful and it turns out I can still get my name back. In fact it was never "as gone" as I thought. So now I own messymom and themessymom and somehow feel like I am playing a game of real life monopoly. The question is where do I go from here?

After consulting a team of experts (my dad and husband), I think I am just going to use this name (messy mom) and try and redirect traffic for the next year with themessymom.com. The damage has already been done, so I might as well just ride the wave all the way through. Like I said yesterday messy mom is the original name I wanted anyway and it could be a valuable piece of property some day. Remember bloggers and business owners your domain name is an investment, learn from my mistake and stay on top of it. For information about poaching and domain expiration policies read this article from ecomputerlaw.com it was very helpful to me.

The good news is I am not a successful blogger (what an ironic sentence). What I mean is that it could have been a lot worse if there had been money or a massive following involved. Although this whole experience has been a bit disheartening I think that in the end I am going to come out knowing more about the internet. Yea! Just what I always wanted! Ha. Not really.



If you follow through blogger you should still be following me if you use another method you may want to change your subscription to www.messymom.com

Blogiversary Nightmare!

Last night I went through my blog emails to try to find out how to renew my domain name since it was about to expire, but I didn't see any email notifications and I wasn't sure how to even do it. Then this morning when I went to check my blog I found this hellacious image

Okay so maybe the image isn't that bad, but it says welcome to the messy mom and it is not the messy mom! I feel so violated. I panicked a little and eventually found out that some poachers had a way to get my domain name at midnight when it expired and want $50 for me to get it back. It's really wrong what happened. I have been building my blog and readership for 2 years now. I have poured my heart and soul into it, and although it may not be the most amazing or popular blog ever it's the one thing I do for myself. It's my little time to sit down and write and unwind and it was taken right out from under me by people that don't care about the name AT ALL! As tears are streaming down my face my little boy asks me what's wrong and I tell him that I lost my domain name. I didn't have the energy to explain it to him in his terms. Later on he looked at me with his big brown eyes and said "You sad mommy. I'm sorry you lost your name. Can I make you happy?" He gave me a kiss and asked if that made me happy. I said "yes, of course that makes mommy very happy." He sure can be a little monster, but his heart even at 2 years old is enormous. It keeps me grounded in moments like these.

Anyway, in all of this I lost my "THE" and so instead the messy mom I am just messy mom, which actually is the name I wanted when I started 2 years ago, but it wasn't up for grabs back then. Obviously as you other bloggers know there are some severe ramifications to all of this. Through site meter and followers I estimate I have at least 50 regular readers. Not an earth shattering amount, but more than the zero readers I have as I write this. Most of the people I know personally do NOT read my blog so I can't just send out an email or something. I had big plans for my blogiversary poem this week, but I am going to hold off on that and take a week to hopefully find these little lost sheep and redirect traffic as best as I can. I also need to change my header and signature, and BLAH I am dreading it already. Any tips are greatly appreciated. Sorry to inconvenience everyone. Thanks for your support and PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE leave me a comment and let me know that you have found the new site. Thanks.

Pumped About Breastfeeding

I have a few things going on this week that I have had to pump milk for so you will have to excuse the pun. In case you haven't heard it's world breastfeeding week and it's gotten me all revved up. I even went to a breastfeeding brunch at the local WIC office. They gave out prizes and goodie bags and they had these little cards inside which gave some info about nursing in public which I thought was encouraging.


I used to be a little freaked out about breastfeeding. My mom breastfed all 4 of us kids, but I don't remember and was never really exposed to it at all. In fact one of my first encounters with breastfeeding that I can remember was with my friend Amy. She breastfed both of her kids. We were playing games one night with a bunch of people from church and she asked if anyone in the room would be offended if she fed her baby. A young man who was about to go into the marines almost fainted and ran out of the room. Years later Amy was talking about breastfeeding with some other moms and expressed her affection towards her children and how it was such a tender wonderful act that she has fond memories of. As a young newlywed I almost reacted the same as the marine. I kind of knew that breastfeeding was good nutrition, but I thought of it as an act of duty that I would do as little as possible and for her to describe it as sweet was GROSS to me.

I currently exclusively breastfeed my 5 month old, and my son was breastfed until 15 months and skipping over all the disclaimers I can say that it is a beautiful wonderful thing. Thank you Amy for being a positive example. I hope that in the future nourishing our babies will not be so controversial and that I can be a part of that movement.


This week I have come across so many great resources on breastfeeding here are a few-

Amy (a different one than mentioned above) did a whole series this week
www.amysfinerthings.com

Amanda was a reluctant breastfeeder. I related to her story SO much.
www.ohamanda.com

Every Ounce Counts is an awesome campaign and there are some cool resources on this page, like a free lullaby music!
www.breastmilkcounts.com

Even I posted about breastfeeding not that long ago.
www.themessymom.com/breastfeeding

and with all these links I am going to link up once more to Its Come 2 This.com Saturday Stumbles. Check it out!

I Was Wrong About You

My little 2 year old has quite the vocabulary, but sometimes he gets ahead of himself with phrases that he doesn't completely understand, like "Just in case." For example he says "Let's watch Ice Age just in case".

Just in case!?

Just in case you break the DVD and you never get to watch it again?

I don't understand.

Or he'll say "I want a banana just in case." His other one is "I was wrong about you." I think they say this in one of the Toy Story movies, but regardless he says it to me all the time in his squeaky nasally little voice "Mama, I was wrong about you."

What I am beginning to learn is that I was wrong about me too.

When I was a little girl I said I would never get married. No one believed me and they would tell me someday you will meet a guy, fall in love, and you'll change your mind. At 5 years old I was disgusted by the idea and DETERMINED to prove them all wrong.
Fast forward 13 years. I got married about as quick as I possibly could. So I was wrong about me, but what did I know, I was only 5.

I used to think that photography was not an art and would say that photographers were wannabe artists that couldn't draw. Now I am one, but I said that in High School so what did I know.

About 10 years ago I would have told you that I was not interested in cloth diapers, or home birth, and was on the fence about epidurals.

Anyone that knows me knows that 2 kids later I am a cloth diapering fool, and natural birth junkie. So I was wrong again. But still, I wasn't a mom yet, so what did I know.

I have always said I would never homeschool. I have dear friends that do and do it well, but I don't think I ever could. Then again, what do I know? Although, seriously, I don't plan on it.

Tomorrow I will be posting about how I was wrong about breastfeeding. Lets just say I guess I don't know myself that well.
So maybe next time I hear that little voice say "Mama, I was wrong about you" I can just say, "yeah, me too" just in case.



This post is linked up with Mary at Giving Up On Perfect She used to think blogging about your life was egotistical and not something she would ever get into, but as it turns out she was wrong too!

Baby Gift Bouquet

For my sister-in-law's baby shower everyone went crazy over this adorable baby gift, and I knew I just had to copy it.

She said it was a Martha Stewart craft, so I looked up the video on youtube and made one for a friend of mine who is about to have a baby.

Each little rosette is a baby item. Suggested items are little onesies, socks, and bibs.

I had a bouquet of 7 flowers. Here is a view from above with each item labeled.

Here are the materials I used

-silk flowers
-clay pot
-floral foam
-floral tape
-decorative spanish moss
-ribbon
-safety pins
-baby items

Then I just removed the silk buds from each rose and replaced it with a tightly rolled baby item. You are supposed to use floral tape to keep them in place, but unfortunately I had to use a safety pin on some. There are so many ways you could change it up and get creative with this craft. It's cute, it's practical, and it's sure to be a hit.

This was my first time to link up with Somewhat Simple's Strut Your Stuff Thursday. You should check it out. All the stuff is so awesome I almost didn't participate, but I did, and I managed to slip in at entry #300.