Some of you have marveled how a hardcore socialist like myself has bought into Disney, the epitome of consumer-culture.  I can’t really explain it myself except that I think that saying Disney is about consumerism is about as true as saying blogging conferences are about brands.  That statement only allows for one viewpoint, where the reality is that if you give Disney or blogging conferences a panoramic treatment, you will see that some come to Disney for the magic, some come for the products, some come for the service, and some come because they need that time away with their family in order to cement them as a unit; much in the same way some people do go to blogging conferences to connect with brands and promote their own blog, but many others attend in order to catch up with friends, meet people face-to-face, learn something new, or simply infuse themselves with more energy so they can continue their blog.

The products aren’t why we go to Disney.

And the reality is that as expensive as Disney is overall, we do it fairly cheaply all things considered.  We use points for the airplanes.  We stay on-property at a value resort (much less expensive than other hotels because you also knock off transportation costs from the airport, the rental of a car, and daily parking — believe me, we’ve priced this thing out).  The tickets are expensive, but when you look at the cost vs. how many hours you’re in the parks being entertained, it looks like a good deal considering we wouldn’t think twice about seeing a two-hour movie for $8.  We saw three Broadway-quality shows and went on rides for 14 hours (yes, we’re that crazy family) for $40.  We don’t buy the kids additional toys or costumes until the last day when they’re allowed to choose one thing for under $20.  And we bring our own food, eating out only one meal per day.

So Disney doesn’t feel like consuming to me — at least not in the sense of collecting tangible products.  It feels like experiencing, and I am fine paying for experiences.

That’s how I justify it.

*******

It’s also one of the only public places on earth that is entirely child-focused.  I know we think that the world revolves around pregnant women and mothers; the special parking spaces and the early boarding on planes and the enormous strollers.  And like the example above with blogging conferences, it is easy as an infertile woman to get tunnel vision (especially when I leave the house and start noticing all. of. those. bellies. and. babies).  But then I remove my adult glasses and my infertility glasses and take another look at the world.

The reality is that it’s an adult world and we expect children to comport themselves as close to adults as possible within it.  We expect them to use quiet voices and not knock over things and not run about.  They don’t always function well in that adult world (mostly because they’re not adults so they’ll never behave in the exact same way), and they also can pick up how much their mere presence fills people with dread.  We were out to lunch this week and a woman stopped by our table to tell us how well-behaved our children were.  And that just about says it all.  Would you ever go up to the adults at the table next to you and say slowly and carefully: “I really liked your behaviour in this restaurant.”?  It was nice to get that feedback, but what she was saying was “you did a good job blending into OUR world, the ADULT world, the one that rules public spaces.”  And when you get the snarls, what they means is that the child did a crap job blending into our world, the adult world, even if they would have been doing a fine job if they had been in their world, the child world.

Listen, I’m guilty of it too.  I’ve gritted my teeth in a movie theater while a child asks questions about the film behind me.  And I’ve wondered why a parent isn’t removing their tantruming child from a store.  I am an adult — I like spending the majority of time around people who are comporting themselves in an adult-like fashion regardless of their age.  It is more pleasant to dine with someone quietly eating rather than bouncing around on their seat.  But I’m also mindful that I drag my kids into the adult world (food stores, restaurants, bookstores… every store) daily and that affects both the twins AND every adult around them who are also trying to use those public spaces.

But Disney World is a kid-focused space, where they can make noise and no one cares.  They can have a meltdown and no one blinks an eye.  No one comments on the size of a stroller.  The menus reflect the tastes of the common child.  And adults are expected to act more kid-like there rather than the other way around.  We’re expected to get excited and use all of our senses and be in the moment.

And it’s sort of cool to allow your kids time in a completely fun, kid-focused space.  And it’s sort of cool to spend time as an adult remembering how it felt to be a kid again.  To shriek with excitement when you see something so amazingly cool that it is not to be believed.  To be scared to go on a ride.  To soar high above the park on an elephant.

*******

And then there are the unintentional things that occur, those moments that Disney didn’t orchestrate, but that allow you hold onto their babyhoods that much longer.  The buses are crowded, so you pull your child onto your lap to give another person the opportunity to sit down.  And then you travel from the park back to the hotel with your nose buried against your child’s sweaty scalp.  And you try not to cry because it has been so long since it was a given that they’d sit in your lap and snuggle against you for a good half hour trek.

It was hard to leave Disney — and I know I say this often and it hasn’t exactly come true yet — because at some point, it’s going to look a little odd if we’re still holding our kids on our laps.  Seriously, picture a 12-year-old boy being snuzzled by his mother on public transport.  Right now, they’re still totally willing to have us pick them up or carry them or sit on our laps.  But if we look at cuddle minutes like an hourglass, our sand is running out.  Back when they were newborns, I craved the ability to put them down for five minutes (oh please oh please oh please G-d just give me five minutes without a child attached to me so I can urinate in peace… or at least with a door between me and the squalling baby).  And now they’re totally happy to give me five minutes to pee; in fact, if I want it, I can take three hours to go work and they’ll play by themselves happily.

Crap.

It’s this strange blessing; I wouldn’t want them dependent on me forever, but I certainly don’t want them to pull away.  And really, I just want more opportunities to pull them into my lap, where they can’t squirm away or tell me that we’re late to soccer or that they have homework to do.  Disney is a place where they’re mine, they’re mine, they’re ALL MINE and I don’t have to share them with teachers or their friends or their coaches.

And I’m just fucking greedy when it comes down to it.  Disney didn’t orchestrate this truth — that it is a space to steal away to with your child, where you can hold them to youth like the boys in Neverland — but it is a side effect of the space.  And that’s why I crave it, more than other trips, other vacations.  Because they cocoon too, not asking for electronic products or other distractions.  They are just there, in the moment, and you’re floating on a theoretical island, remembering what it felt like when they never left your arms.

*******

Fine; I drank the Kool-Aid.

It’s hot down there; it happens.

I know we’ll have fun on our next holiday — a literary trip where we are reading four books from the same country and then traveling to all the spots in the stories — but it won’t be exactly the same.  They’ll be a little more grown-up, magic will be replaced by a different sliver of imagination.  And it’s not a bad thing; it’s just different.  I want them to grow, I want them to stay exactly the same, and the sadness stems from knowing that you can’t have it both ways, and you don’t even get to decide anyway.

The Wolvog lost another tooth.  He was biting into a bagel in the Orlando airport on our way back from Disney, and he felt it wobble in his mouth, so he did what any sane first-grader would do: he stood by the gate and screamed with his mouth wide open and filling with blood, “mahuutisallinoooooooooooooooooooooout.”  I really think the boy has a strong future in movie zombie work.

Josh took him to the bathroom to clean up and returned victorious with said tooth in his hand.  He tucked it into his pocket and then passed it to me when we returned home.  I placed it on top of my desk so it wouldn’t get lost and then promptly forgot about it for a week.

The Wolvog waited about seven days until he meekly said to me, “uh, the tooth fairy sort of hasn’t come.”

Crap.

So I fully accepted the blame: I hadn’t emailed her.  The tooth had gotten lost in the shuffle of unpacking from the trip.  But I was totally on top of this.  I was emailing her right now.  I was asking her to come tonight.

The Wolvog placed the tooth in his special pillow (which had been my special pillow when I was little — sorry, I’m cheap and didn’t buy the kids their own tooth pillow… another mark against me if you’re keeping score).  And he set it on the floor next to his bed.  And he went to sleep.

And I completely forgot about it.

I didn’t realize that I had forgotten until the next day when I walked in his room to turn off his lights (seriously, it’s as if the kids are allergic to light switches) and saw the pillow now on top of his dresser.  Crap. I hoped the kid somehow didn’t notice.

To check if he had somehow missed checking the pillow, when he returned from school I casually asked him what the tooth fairy brought him and he answered: “She didn’t come last night.”

“Are you kidding me?  What happened?  Let me check your room; I’ll be right back.”

I went upstairs, paused for a moment, and then came back down.  “Sweetie, you moved the pillow.  I told her it was on the floor and now it’s on your dresser.  She must have gotten confused.”

The Wolvog stared at me for a moment.  “The pillow was on my floor all night.  Daddy moved it to the dresser this morning.”

Crap.

So I insisted that the tooth fairy must have had something crazy important come up.  I’d email her again, make sure she knew which room, told him to leave the pillow in PLAIN SIGHT on top of the dresser, and she would absolutely definitely come that evening while he slept.

The little boy went to sleep, dreaming toothless dreams.  And I forgot.  AGAIN.

He woke up in the morning and reported that the tooth fairy once again hadn’t shown.  And I did what any irresponsible parent would do: I tore the tooth fairy a new asshole.

“I seriously can’t believe that fairy!  What the hell is wrong with her?  I can’t believe how irresponsible she is.  I am really really angry.  I am emailing her right now and telling her that she can’t treat my little boy this way.”

“Please,” the Wolvog pleaded with me as I scraped my chair back.  “Don’t make her angry.  I’m sure she has a good reason.”

“She could be very very ill,” the ChickieNob intoned.  “Very ill.”

“No,” I heard myself say because I am the worst parent ever.  “No, she’s not sick.  I don’t buy that.  She’s irresponsible and she’s treating my kids like crap and I’m angry.  I’m going to wait up until she comes tonight, and then I’m going to talk to her about this.  In fact, put the tooth pillow in MY room, right on my bed, and I’m going to grab her when she flies into my room tonight.”

The Wolvog pleaded with me not to grab the tooth fairy, but he agreed to leave the tooth pillow in my room and let me handle it.

And seriously, even though it was ON TOP OF MY FREAKIN’ BED, I almost forgot a third time.  A THIRD TIME.  Josh and I were about to go to sleep, and suddenly I saw it and said, “crap!  Give me the tooth.”

I slipped it into the ziplock bag of baby teeth I have for each kid.  I have to admit that it feels absolutely bizarre to have a ziplock bag filled with human teeth in my bedroom.  I mean, if someone said that to you: “I have a ziplock bag filled with human teeth in my bedroom,” wouldn’t you run screaming?  And yet, that is precisely what I have — one for each child.  Because what else do you do with these tiny parts of your child?  Throw them out?  Do you know how hard it was to grow those kids?  Do you honestly think I’m ditching even one part of them when they cost me so much to create?

In the morning, the Wolvog casually came into our room, and Josh proudly told him to check the tooth pillow.  He reached in and said in a quiet voice, “she finally came and she left a dollar.  She took the tooth.”

And, seriously, because I couldn’t help myself, I said in my most enraged voice, “are you going to tell me that she has the gall to just waltz in here, take the tooth, leave some money, AND NOT WRITE AN APOLOGY NOTE?”

Because, you know, I forgot that too.

Josh picked out the Halloween candy this year, so I haven’t bothered to open it yet.  When I buy the Halloween candy, I get something I like (I know — totally counterproductive) and sneak pieces of it in the days leading up to Halloween.  He went with Reeses Pieces, which are fine, but not a candy I crave.  And he bought Hershey miniatures, which again are fine, but since we go to Hershey often it also doesn’t feel like an enormous treat.  If it had been up to me, I would have gone with that chocolate mix that contains Snickers (which go in the freezer), Twix, and M&Ms.

I think the biggest shame of Halloween is that you can only get individually-wrapped candies.  Everyone knows that the best candies do not come individually wrapped, with the exception of Cadbury Easter eggs (though it would probably look a little off to pass out Cadbury eggs in October).

The three best candies I’ve ever had were (1) Koppers cappuccino cordials.  There was a store where I grew up that had candies (including these cordials) in bulk along with a multitude of glass jimjicks.*  If we behaved while we were out, my mother sometimes got us a small bag of candy at the store. (But watch out! It was also a trap because if you — for instance — yanked your sister’s hair while the woman behind the counter measured your candy into one of the clear plastic bags, and said sister pushed you backwards, you could break one of the 3000 glass items in the store.  It was a minefield with candy on the other side if you could make your way around all the glass.)  I’m not even a fan of white chocolate, but these are the most insanely fantastic candies ever.

The store also sold (2) Bogdon’s Reception Candy Sticks.  I was recently in a store that also sold them, and it took all my willpower to not introduce them to the twins.  I felt like it was a responsibility thing as a parent much in the same way that I wouldn’t give my kids crack.  I do not want them to experience the same Bogdon’s Reception Candy Stick addiction that I went through.  I used to like to suck off the majority of the chocolate and then eat the stick using only my two front teeth.  See, just as attractive as a meth addict.

My last candy was (3) a tiny circular tin of mints that I picked up at Disney World when I was little.  Each mint ball was about a 1/4th the size of my pinky nail — tiny! — and matte and pastel-coloured and crunchy.  I’ve never had a better mint, and I’ve never found something like it.  The closest I got were the “refresh” mints the HTC gave out this summer at BlogHer right before the Community Keynote.  We have since finished ours, and they were a damn fine mint.  Only a shade underneath my memory of the Disney ones.

What are you passing out at your house?  What do you wish you could pass out to everyone because it is an insanely good candy?

* Back when Josh and I were dating, he said he wanted to marry me because I was the type of person who used the term “jimjick;” most often as an adjective rather than a noun (eg. “She has the most jimjicky apartment I’ve ever been in.”).  I often wonder if he still thinks it’s a good reason to marry someone.

Earlier in October, there were a spate of blog posts on Scientific American deconstructing a study that was examining estrogen levels and the desire to have children.  It also looked at facial features which were commonly thought of as “feminine” (an admittance: I really couldn’t tell the difference between the low maternal and high maternal faces in terms of femininity).  Researchers found that “higher levels of estrogen correlated with an expressed desire for more children, and higher ratings of facial femininity correlated with an expressed desire for more children. High levels of biological feminization correlate with an expressed desire for kids.”

Okay.

One of the blog posts pointed out the social factors that can’t be accounted for with this study — do women who constantly hear that they’d make a great mother want children more?  In other words, is the drive I found to do anything in order to reach parenthood more tied to a biological impulse, or was it created because I got messages about motherhood since nursery school?

Or even before that — the dolls, the “house” corner in the classroom, the sex ed classes that presented the assumption that all girls would one day be pregnant, the expectation of babysitting, the praise over my babysitting skills, the constant message I received throughout my young adult life: “you would make a great mother.”  And is it reinforced now, is that drive to continue building my family based on my experience with parenting and enjoying it, or is it that external feedback: “you’re a great mother.”  If I was constantly told that I was actually doing a crap-ass job, would I still be saying that I want three kids?

So much for free will.

Another SA blogger covered the paper, an IVFer who admits she had no maternal impulse as a child but developed it hardcore as an adult.  And I like the fears she points out: “But I worry about two things: how the media will frame the article, and how the study authors defined two of their most important variables.”  As well as her end-point: “Not wanting a baby today, or any day, does not make you less feminine. And when the media onslaught begins over these findings, we would do well to remember it.”

Which sort of brings me to my real question: what is the point of these sorts of studies?  Is it knowledge for knowledge’s sake?  An attempt to understand the world?  Can we really use these findings? (And if research isn’t applicable in the day-to-day world, is it worth funding?)  How could we use these findings: to determine who really wants kids in an IVF lottery?  To help us choose a mate?  To have a reason to give prying relatives who insinuate that we need to get started having kids?

Would you want to know your estrogen levels at all those points throughout the cycle (I only know my levels from when we were already messing with my body with stims)?  Would it make any difference?

The discussion of the study is sort of more interesting than the study itself.  The original researcher weighed in with her own blog post this week responding to their blog posts about her study (was that convoluted enough for you?)  She points out that she didn’t disregard those societal factors, but rather, discussing them in the paper would be like discussing how restaurants are constructed when trying to critique the food — of course restaurant structure plays a role in how you enjoy the meal, but if the point of an article is to examine the chef’s skills in the kitchen and discuss the food, it would be off-point to start talking about the history of the building and where the supporting walls are located.

As she says:

I could understand the objection, if we had written only about hormones in the context of a broad review paper of maternal behaviour, or a piece for popular consumption in a newspaper. But scientific research is necessarily specific. We are evolutionary psychologists working in the field of how hormones relate to behaviour; Our research question was investigating possible links between hormones and behaviour (in this case, maternal preferences); We published in the journal ‘Hormones & Behaviour’!

And she gets to the heart of the matter with her question:

I can’t help but wonder, would all these criticisms be made of a research paper looking at … hmm let’s say.. genetic variation and osteoarthritis? …  So why, when it comes to studies like ours, do scientists from other disciplines momentarily forget their scientific training and opt for emotional responses, personal anecdotes, and sweeping generalisations about a broad academic field of study?

She’s right: I would probably not have even clicked to read the whole article if it hadn’t been speaking about maternal desires, a topic that twists a little knife in my heart.  And her final point about treating maternal instincts as a spectrum vs. a normal/abnormal resonated with me.

Maybe this study gets under my skin because if there is a hormonal tie, there is a feeling of “you can run but you cannot hide” from your destiny.  And it could be the explanation for why some people are willing to try anything to reach parenthood and some people are willing to step away.  Perhaps if we knew how our hormones were coming into play with those decisions, we could also have peace of heart; a lack of guilt over our decisions.  We could explain it to others: it’s just as much part of who we are and out of our control as our brown hair or hazel eyes.  Our need to press forward with treatments, third party reproduction or adoption, or our knowledge about ourselves that it feels right to step in a different direction.

What are your thoughts?

SPECIAL PRIZE FOR THIS ICOMLEAVWE: One participant from November’s IComLeavWe will be randomly chosen to move their entry into the 6th slot on the Creme de la Creme list (getting more eyes on their post).

Welcome back to IComLeavWe. It stands for International Comment Leaving Week, but if you say it aloud, doesn’t it sounds like “I come; [but] leave [as a] we”? And that’s sort of the point. Blogging is a conversation and comments should be honoured and encouraged. I like to say that comments are the new hug–a way of saying hello, giving comfort, leaving congratulations.

Here is the vital information, pure and simple (a more detailed set of rules follows below the list):

• The list opens the 1st of every month. It remains open until the 21st. You can add yourself at any point. The list is open to everyone in the blogosphere — blog writers and/or blog readers.
• Add yourself to the list by filling out this form: The list is now closed.  The December list will open on the 1st.
• Click here to cut-and-paste this bit of code to add to your sidebar (if you have the old code from another month, remove it and replace it with this one). You need to add the icon or a link to the current list on your blog (see below) and will not be added until it’s up.
• Commenting kicks off every month on the 21st. Please mark it somewhere (calendar, post-it note taped to your computer…), though I will be sending out an email reminder on the 20th. Commenting week runs from the 21st to the 28th. Every day, leave 5 comments and return 1 comment for a total of 6 comments. You are highly encouraged to choose the blogs you comment on from the participants list below, but this is not required.
• I will send a second email on the 28th to remind you to remove the icon from your blog.
• Read below if you want to find out about Iron Commenters.
• The commenting ends on the 28th. We catch our breath and the whole thing starts again the next month on the 1st. Drop in and out according to what is happening in your life between the 21st and the 28th.

1. Stirrup Queens (twins, books, writing)
2. Feeling Beachie (life, humor, family)
3. Bio Girl (parenting, infertility, endometriosis)
4. Here We Go Again (parenting, random)
5. Four of a Kind (parenting, secondary infertility, loss)
6. Geebaby (life, early, waiting)
7. Searching for Our Silver Lining (infertility, ivf, life)
8. Life and Love in the Petri Dish (donor egg, 6 m/cs, life)
9. Life As I Know It (twins, parenting, life)
10. The Days of Our Lives (infertility, adoption, marriage)
11. Hiding Scars in my Yarn (loss, children, crafts)
12. The Elusive Second Line (infertility, pcos, fertility doctors)
13. The 2 Week Wait (infertility pregnancy humor)
14. Where Do We Go From Here? (infertility, life, family)
15. Planet Hausfrau (crafts, cooking, kids)
16. Donor Diva: Mother via Egg Donation (egg donation, parenting, TTC #2)
17. A Miracle in the Works (preparing for IVF #1, TTC #1)
18. Someday (expecting, gratitude, home-birth)
19. Searching For the Missing Piece (waiting family, adoption, life)
20. Write Mind Open Heart (open adoption, mindfulness, perfect moments)
21. Somewhere in the Middle (infertility, DIA, waiting)
22. My Lady of the Lantern (neonatal loss, grief, pregnancy)
23. Survive and Thrive (early pregnancy, hope)
24. Endo and Beyond (food, miscarriages, trying to decide what to do next)
25. As Good As It Gets? (parenting, infertility, adoption)
26. BattleFish (ttc #1, ivf #3, life)
27. Ginger and Lime (infertility, religion, trashy TV)
28. It Is What It Is (Or Is It?) (domestic adoption, being adopted, life)
29. The Pursuit of Pregnancy (surrogacy, adoption, autoimmune)
30. Our New Normal (adoption, pregnancy loss, weight loss)
31. Hobbit-ish Thoughts & Ramblings (expecting #2, parenting, cooking)
32. Created Family (ttc #1, unexplained infertility, social worker)
33. Babylicious Tales (parenting, newbie, life)
34. Ambition: Motherhood (pregnant, donor sperm)
35. Journey to the Finish Line (infertility, running, everything)
36. The Perpetual Aunt (azoospermia, fertility options)
37. Becoming Parents (IVF, TTC #1, habitual aborter)
38. Wistfulgirl’s World (adoption, parent death, life)
39. Digital-Damita.net (clomid, pcos, ttc)
40. CD1 Again (infertility, family, taking a break)
41. Musings of a Hormonal Egg Basket (parenting after IVF)
42. Meier Madness (PCOS, IVF, keeping the crazy at bay)
43. Notes from the Ninth Circle (stalled, frustration, stress)
44. A Year On… Our New Beginning {hopefully} (stillbirth, secondary IF, IVF)
45. Donating Hope (egg donor SIF)
46. The Good Stuff (parenthood, crafts, life)
47. Lessons from and Infertile Social Worker (transracial open adoption)
48. Eggs In A Row (coping, PCOS, marriage)
49. An Engineer Becomes a Mom (adoption, infertility, random)
50. Searching for Serendipity (ivf, faith, randomness)
51. A Fine Mess (miscarriage, infertility, adoption)
52. Hapa Hopes (infertility, life, intercultural)
53. Donor Eggs Journey (FET, Thailand, trying 4 2nd)
54. What IF? (infertility, ivf, health)
55. Hoping for a Due Date in Good Time (IVF, endometriosis, infertility)
56. Cablearms (art, life, miscarriages)
57. Not Just An Army Wife (loss, ivf, military)
58. Detour (infertility, loss, endometriosis)
59. Holly’s Narrative Dream (infertility, life, moving forward)
60. For We Are Bound by Symmetry (TTC#1, IVF#1, clinical trial)
61. Praying for a Pregnancy (ivf, pregnancy, ivf)
62. Kate; Uncensored (life after infertility)
63. Dragondreamer’s Lair (parenting, secondary infertility, crafts)
64. TTC Baby E (ivf, pregnancy, twins)
65. Between the Paper Sheets (infertility, weight loss, marriage)
66. Hannah Wept, Sarah Laughed (infertility, writing, waiting)
67. Pink Lipgloss & Prenatals (IVF, FET, infertility)
68. The Rocky Road To Motherhood (life after ivf)
69. Bodega Bliss (recovering from pregnancy loss)
70. Living Our Life In Cycles (endometriosis, IF, hope)
71. Relaxed No More (TTC, pregnancy loss, TTC)
72. Zeroguarantees (Suro twins arrived)
73. Colours of Cattiz (pregnancy after ivf, 1st trimester)
74. So This is Love (love, family, rambles)
75. The Stork Drop Zone (infertility, humor, life)
76. Chasing Our Stork: From ART to Adoption (international adoption, miracle pregnancy, faith)
77. The Cass Family (infertility, parenting, family)
78. Metholic (infertility, fostercare, humor)
79. Taking the Long Way (rpl, MTHFR, new baby)
80. Bring on the Babies… (IVF, recurrent miscarriage, immune)
81. MissConception (infant loss, TTC#1, PCOS)
82. Fox In The HenHouse (infertility, ectopic pregnancy, loss)
83. The Cornfed Feminist (pcos, iui, irony)
84. This Space For Rent (infertility, ivf, army)
85. Lil Family Blog (lesbian, family-life, adoption)
86. Waiting for Little Feet (infertility, PCOS, treatment)
87. Cinderella Wore Glass Slippers (international adoption, life)
88. Cherish This Day (finally a family of 4, Sagittal Craniosynostosis diagnosis)
89. Marriage 2.0 (infertility, adoption wait, life)
90. Fit to Parent (adoption, waiting, preparing)
91. The misadventures of missohkay (adoption, pregnancy loss)
92. Mompreneur Mogul (blogging, parenting,humor)
93. Getting There (adoption, parenting, life)
94. Trying to Conceive (life after IVF)
95. Infertiles Laughing (adoption, infertility, humor)
96. Just Waiting for My Turn (infertility, fibroids, life)
97. Historias Secretas (pregnancy after ICSI)
98. All I Ever Wished For (if, ivf, life)
99. Scrambled Eggs (infertility, pcos, life)
100. A Second Line (baby, stillbirth, infertility)
101. Hope Delayed (infertility, ivf, life)
102. The Kay Khronicles (food, infertility, life)
103. A peek into our journey (pg with triplets, IVF #2, infertility)
104. My Life in a Nut Shell (miscarriage, healing, infertility)
105. Connecting the Dots (infertility, parenting, non-profits)
106. Carney Exploits (infertility, debt, homemaking)
107. A Woman My Age (adoption, infertility, parenting after 40)
108. 3hearts2hold1love (parenting after IF, secondary IF, life in general)
109. Plan B: DIYBaby (ivf, yoga, wellbeing)
110. Life is Simple, It’s Just Not Easy (infertility, ttc#1, post-cancer)
111. Weathering the Storm (transracial adoption, parenting, life)
112. The Well-Read Wife (books, life, kids)
113. A Freckled Life (infertility marriage life)
114. Wonderfully Ordinary (parenting, infertility, life)
115. my dusty uterus (humor, first pregnancy)
116. Our Journey (pcos, wife, mom)
117. Our Roller Coaster through IVF (infertility, life, family)
118. Biago – Baby, If All Goes Optimally (secondary infertility fet)
119. Ricecakes & Redemption (infertility, foster parenting, endometriosis)
120. The list is now closed.  The December list opens on the 1st.

Q: What if I miss a day?

A: Catch up the next day by doubling your comments – 12 comments instead of 6.

Q: What if I have two blogs? Can I sign up twice, listing both blogs?

A: Yes, but you also need to double your comments. If you have two blogs listed, you should be leaving 12 comments per day.

Q: What is an Iron Commenter?

A: Not for the faint-of-heart. People who wish to be an Iron Commenter and be entered on the Iron Commenter honour roll need to leave a comment on every blog on the participants list (exceptions are blogs that require you to have a special log-in, such as some LiveJournal accounts or other similar situations). You can spread out this commenting any way you wish over the whole week, but the final comment needs to be left by midnight on the 28th (EST). Reaching Iron Commenter status is done on an honour system. Please email me if you earn Iron Commenter status so I can add you to the wall of honour.

Q: Why do I have to add that bit of code to my sidebar?

A: The code is the latest icon (the icon changes colour every month so you know that you’re on the right list). This month, the icon is navy blue, the next month it will be yellow, etc. The reason is two-fold: (1) it enables more people to find out about IComLeavWe and (2) it gives you easy access to the current list once the commenting week actually begins and better ensures that you’ll use it. Too many times, people sign up and forget to actually do IComLeavWe and this icon gives you a daily reminder (with the dates on it) every time you open your own blog. The icon is linked back to the current list. On the 28th, remove the icon from your blog. A new one will be created for the next month.

Q: It’s the 23rd and I just saw this for the first time on my friend’s blog! I want to join the list–why can’t I?

A: Because IComLeavWe happens every month, once the list is closed, it’s closed. If you’re finding out about this on the 23rd, you can’t join the current month. But leave yourself a note to check back in a week on the 1st and you can sign up for the next month.

Q: You said the list closes on the 21st. Well, it’s still the 21st where I am. Why aren’t you moving my information onto the list?

A: All dates and times are U.S. Eastern Standard Time (UTC/GMT -5 hours). The list closes around 11 p.m. EST on the 21st.

Q: What if no one comments on my blog and I have no comments to return?

A: Well, that really doesn’t happen for the most part, but in that case, simply choose another blog and add an additional comment. The goal is to hit 6 comments daily as a minimum. Going over that is fantastic and encouraged.

Q: Mel, my question wasn’t covered at all. What do I do?

A: Email me; I’m quite friendly. It helps to place “IComLeavWe” in the subject line. You could also check this post which contains the history of IComLeavWe and see if you can glean anything there.

Looking for the comment section? It has been closed on this post. Use the form in the directions to add yourself to the list.