President Barack Obama, First Lady Michelle Obama, and their daughters, Sasha and Malia, sit for a family portrait in the Oval Office, Dec. 11, 2011. (Official White House Photo by Pete Souza)

I received a copy of the new White House portrait of the Obama family today from their social media office.

They took the new photograph because it has been two years since the last formal portrait and the girls have changed so much in the interim.  Frankly, we’ve all changed so much in the interim.  I looked back today on the post I wrote about the day we went to vote, and I’ve been thinking ahead about getting involved in campaigning for Obama, this time bringing the twins with me so they can be involved in every step of the democratic process.

The picture reminded me of why I like having my blog be one continual space, much as Gwinne said in her comment, “I’ve thought about writing a post-IF/baby blog and shutting down my current one, but I like the way one continuous blog reflects a LONG journey, with many twists and turns.”  Five and a half years ago when I first started writing this space, the twins were giving up their bottles.  Two years ago, I was crying over the fact that they were five.  And now they are programming computers and squeezing Cozy and reading poetry.  And two years from now, we will be in the middle of our elementary school years, and this blog will be driving a sports car as it struggles with the 7-year itch.

I love the picture above because they are our First Family, and we’ve seen their children grow over the years.  And because that picture reminds me that none of us are where we were two years ago, and none of us know where we’ll be two years from now — and that is both a scary and wonderful thought.  Anything could happen, and that is the thought that brings me through difficult times: that I will not always be in this emotional place forever.  And that is what makes me appreciate the good times: because I will not always be in this emotional place forever.

How have you changed in the last two years?  If you’ve been blogging for at least two years, post a link to your nearest blog post to two years ago today.  It’s quite fitting that the post I have is about the friendships I’ve gained from being online.

This is it.  The last day to submit your blog so that it is on the Creme de la Creme list when the list goes up on January 1st in the morning.  You will still be able to submit after today (up until January 5th) BUT your blog will not be on the list initially.  It will be added some time in January.

So, 11:59 pm EST is the final minute that blogs will be accepted if you want it on the list when it first goes up.  Consider this your final heads up.

Please take a moment to help spread word today so that no one who wants to be on the list is left out.  Tweet it, Facebook it, blog about it, email friends and poke them.  And then kick back and relax until January 1st.

Trinity said it best when she summed up parenting after infertility blogging as complicated.  It is not exactly cut-and-dried beforehand; plenty of bloggers struggle with the should-I-press-publish conundrum.  We all worry about offending readers, not because we’re hung up on keeping people around (oh please stick around please stick around) but because we’re human beings who actually care if people are hurt by something we write.  Though the reality is that blogging is not like a one-on-one conversation where you have a sense of the other person.  Blogging is like playing a game of ski ball blindfolded: you know generally where to roll the ball, but you don’t always know your aim until after the ball is out of your hand.

Trinity raised great points because — and I include myself in this description — we are a conflicted bunch.  The twins are here (and I actually started blogging after they were here and we were trying for our third child, so I have always been a parenting blogger).  I can’t deny their existence and to not mention them at all is strange: they take up an enormous chunk of my time and thoughts.  I want to talk about them.  I like talking about them.  I learn a lot from being around them.  And perhaps I’m reading too much into other people’s compliments, but I think they’re the sort of people that others usually enjoy being around, whether that is face-to-face or in the flat medium of the computer screen via a story.  They — at the very least — say amusing things.

And yet I also know that many people probably don’t want to hear about them.  That it is actually painful to hear about them.  That instead of laughing over a story, that it may even be making you cry.

Which makes me pause — often — before hitting publish.  And sometimes I don’t hit publish.

I think of my blog in percentages much in the same way I think of food in percentages.  I sort of take an overview of my day and see if I’m eating a large enough percentage of vegetables and a large enough percentage of protein.  If I didn’t think about it at all, I know that I’d probably eat pasta for every meal.  Or melba toast.  I am such a fan of melba toast.  But I know that it isn’t good for my body to focus solely on one food even if that food happens to be my favourite and taste good.

And I think about blog writing in the same way.  If I stuck to a single topic and kept a microfocus, it may feel good in the moment to write like that, but I think overall, it probably isn’t healthy for me to deny large chunks of my life in order to only explore a single idea.  So I sometimes step back and take stock for a period of time.  Have I written a bit about blogging and social media?  A bit about infertility?  A bit about the twins?  A bit about melba toast and my enormous love of it?  If I have, then I have a balanced blog, which feels — for me — a bit healthier mentally.  Meaning, I feel healthier mentally when I don’t allow myself to have a solo focus.  Other people may feel much better if they’re only writing about one thing.

There’s more than one way to blog. (Actually, there isn’t; there is only my way, but I feel like I have to say that to get back to that first point of trying not to offend someone.  I’m just kidding.  I’m not kidding.  Crap, this is one of those times that I shouldn’t have hit publish.)

This post is from the viewpoint of someone parenting after infertility; who still has one foot (at least that is how I view myself; perhaps you don’t view me this way at all) in the infertility world and another in the blogging and social media world and another (yes, I have three feet) in the parenting world and another (I lied, I have four) in the melba toast world.

The ALI community is a community that is situationally-based, which leads to tension between those who are still in the situation and those who are out of the situation and those who are sort of in and sort of out at the same time.  We have all these overlapping ways you could be here, and some of those overlapping ways actually create conflict — such as those who need a safe space to not have to see sonogram pictures and those who have a burning need to post their sonogram picture because they’ve waited so long to have one to upload (and perhaps need to upload it to also feel “normal” after feeling on the outskirts for so long).  And we still need to find a way to live with one another.

Regardless of which side of the trenches you stand (or if you’re sort of half-in and half-out of the trenches, munching a piece of melba toast at the same time), do you find yourself holding your tongue for the sake of the community?  And how often?

I guess what I’m really seeking is whether or not through discussion, we can all come to a place of comfort.  That I can post about the twins without feeling the need to hold back beyond the normal amount of holding back (because I get that other people aren’t really interested in hearing about them non-stop) and you can feel safe to read IF blogs without feeling as if you are walking across a minefield.  Or vice versa.

I was emailing with a friend, and one of the points we touched on is do we expect more from others who have been through infertility or loss.  They know the emotional position we’re in, so do we expect them to rise to the occasion: to use the right words, to deliver the message in the gentlest way?

Because let’s be frank; we are annoyed by outsiders using the wrong terminology within adoption, but we are enraged when insiders say the same thing.  We roll our eyes when our great aunt tells us all we need to do is relax and we’ll get pregnant, but we would be angry if a fellow infertile woman suggested that our problems could be solved with a vacation.  We expect our infertile friends to deliver pregnancy announcements well — though we don’t have a standard definition of “well.”  It mostly involves being discreet, respectful, not posting 100 sonogram pictures each day.

It was something to think about.  There have only been three pregnancy announcements that have upset me (at least, that I can remember), and all three came from fellow infertile women.  I wonder now if it was what they said and the way they said it, or if it was the fact that I believed they should have been able to put themselves in my shoes and give me the information better.

Would I have found the thoughtless way the news was delivered permissible from someone outside the experience?  Would I have maybe rolled my eyes instead of cry?

But really, what is the point in sharing information at all if it doesn’t grant us a little empathy?  I mean that with fellow infertile women that we share our journeys with as well as all the people we open up to along the way.  What is the point in knowing these intimate details of each other’s lives if not to help us know how to support one another?  Isn’t that why we share our stories with other people — so they will be sensitive when we need them to be sensitive?

What do you think?  Do you expect more from fellow infertile women (and men)?  Or, beyond that, anyone you share the intimate details of your life with?  And is it fair to do so; to expect more?

Stop what you are doing right now.  I mean, except reading this post.  Continue reading this post, but carve out 10 minutes of your time to create this insurance policy for yourself.  No, don’t say, “I’ll do it later, I promise.”  Because you won’t.  How do I know this?  Because I know you — and by you, I mean that we’re all the same.  We read something and we say, “shit, that is such a good idea and I should do that.”  And then we don’t.  And later, when we wish we had done that thing, we kick ourselves because if we had just taken the time to do it, we would be in such a different emotional place.

Ten minutes.  That is most likely all you are going to need.

There are 10,000 ways to backup your blog, depending on how nervous you are about the possibility of losing your written thoughts.  There are manual backups and plug-ins that can create a scheduled backup.  You can put it on a thumb drive or a portable hard drive or save it to your computer or save it to the Cloud.  And all of those backups are important because they will help you restore your blog if anything ever happens.

But.

What is the most important part of your blog?  The content: the blog posts, the comments, the layout so you can remember where everything goes.  And for that, you can do a poor man’s backup.  Right now.

(1) Take a screenshot of the front of your blog.  Do this every time you make a major change to the layout of your blog.  Other than that, you just want to have one on file so you can remember the order of things on your sidebars.  Don’t know how to take a screenshot?  Just use the button in the top right corner of your keyboard that says something like Print or PrntScr (it will be something similar to this).  Then go into Microsoft Paint or a similar program, open a new project, and hit paste.  As simple as that.

(2) Make sure a copy of your comments are being emailed to you.  That way, you always have them if you lost your blog.

(3) This is the most important step.  Open a blank Word doc.  Open your blog dashboard and go into settings.  Change the number of posts that can be seen on a screen to largest number of posts you’ve ever had in a month.  For me, this is 30.  Now open your blog to each month, scroll down the whole page highlighting the text, and then paste it into the Word doc.  I like to have my Word Doc look like a blog, therefore, I start with the oldest month and work my way towards the latest month.  Once every blog post has been pasted into my Word doc, I select all and change the font size so it’s all at 12 point so the date isn’t enormous.  And then I hit save.  Then I change the settings back to 5 posts, which is how many you will usually see on the front page when you open my blog.  I do this every few days (though you only need to change the settings if you’re pasting dozens or hundreds of blog posts month-by-month into the Word doc today).

I mostly trust my other backups, but this ensures that I can see — quite clearly — that I have a backup of my content; which is the most important thing to me.

Now go do the same.  Right now.  Without waiting.  Because there is nothing more important than preserving your creativity, your emotional processing, your memories.  Not even that salad you were thinking about making for lunch or that meeting that you’re now 5 minutes late for anyway.  Fine; if you really can’t do this now, put it on your calendar in big print so you do it later today.  And then put it on your calender every week so you can go to sleep with one fewer worry.

Photo Credit: Futureshape.