Back to the begining

I've seen Princess Bride too many times. I keep hearing Fezzig saying "You go back to the beginning..."

Anyway.

Nine years ago I started keeping a journal on my computer of my daughters. Everything went into the journal, first smiles, first words, first steps... and second smiles, words, and steps. That journal had it all. I am much faster at typing so their baby books lay blank, for the most part, and I carefully recorded everything in the computer journal.

Then about six years later we were robbed. Of everything that was stolen the biggest loss was my laptop, and what it contained. The journal, as well as all my digital pictures of my daughters, were gone. I felt like six years of our lives disappeared. I restarted my journal, and maybe a year, year-and-a-half ago I started uploading my journal into this blog. I went back and added a few pictures. My first entry is a little depressed, and longer than I want to include here. But you just feel free to go read it.

Concurrently with the journal I had been sending out baby emails to keep my old friends and co-workers up to date when I quit work to have the 1st baby and dropped off the face of the planet. I was limited to the three photos with each missive that yahoo would let me upload at that time, though as yahoo expanded I was able to upload more. I included a few photos of the girls and a brief explanation of each picture. Several friends had suggested that instead of laboriously copying each baby missive into multiple emails, since yahoo limited the number of people I could send a blanket email to, I should start blogging. "Oh no, too scary, too much work." But after the laptop was stolen and I started blogging anyway, I stopped the baby emails. I've notified the old babymail list that I'm blogging now instead of peppering their inboxes with missives, but where I used to get a bunch of happy emails back "The girls are gorgeous!" mostly I get the response back "I can't read your blog because I'm on Facebook and that's all I have time for!" So I don't think anyone knows what's going on with my kids anymore. But that's a whine for another day.

Luckily for me a dear friend had saved many of the old baby missives I'd sent out and she sent them back to me. I recently started copying them one by one into this blog, (here's the first one) and I figured seeing them will help me remember some of what was stolen. One day it will all be safe on line, and even if my computer gets stolen again, my girls will be able to read what their childhood was like. I blog to express my own joy and frustration, but mostly I try to blog for my kids, this is my new journal for them. Though it's awfully nice to feel a little connection with other adults, too. There are days when the only other voices over 10 years old that I hear are from other people's blogs.

This post is written in to play along with SITS and their Back to Blogging event. Apparently they have sponsors that a good little girl would mention, specifically Standards of Excellence,Westar, and Florida Builder Appliances, but that is just way too much referencing for me. Now I'm exhausted and I still haven't made dinner tonight.