It
has been about a month since Elle's first birthday and she has continued to
thrive and be an complete joy. Just today, she and I went to our beloved
coffee shop and she was chowing down on an apple and a bran muffin, squealing
in delight seeing people. We walked, as in she held my hand and went
where she wanted, around the grounds of the hotel and I put her in various
chairs to big smiles and more squeals. The evolution of her engagement
with the larger world has been remarkable, even if that coming into her body
and place within the world is mirrored by every kid.
We
also just got back from a great trip to Costa Rica (my work) and Miami
(visiting friends). She did great with the travel and charmed pretty much
everyone she met along the way. I wanted to take a moment and write a
tribute to my amazing wife and the great project she undertook and
completed with BABE blogging last month. Being a new parent is hard. There are so many new things happening and you care more than you can imagine
about this little kiddo even if you have no idea what they want and how to keep
them happy. You have vague ideas at first and get better over time at
meeting their needs. Your love towards them is stronger than your
pre-birth self can imagine. And less sleep. And failures. And wanting to
be better.
Through
all that, Muriel faithfully kept her schedule of blogging, and blogging
heartfelt and perceptively and honestly. I am still in awe. Some of the
posts happened at obscene, crazy hours. Okay, most of the posts.
And now she has created a fantastic record of Elle's first year. I want
to highlight a few of the reasons I am so appreciative of her work and her
project.
Parenting
as a shared connection
Several
days ago in Miami, we were hanging out a health store/cafe and there was
another couple with a baby nearly the same age as elle. Of course we ended up
talking with them, sharing some food with each other's baby and generally
connecting in a way that would have been unfathomable pre-Elle. This very
same phenomena has been repeated time and time again, with fellow parents from
across the globe.
BABE
posts have done that in the digital realm at a larger scale, with many of the
posts generating personal and useful digital conversation. With our diffuse
community and looking forward to life in the foreign service abroad, this has
been very affirming. Sharing parenting highs and lows and having others
weigh in with their experience is wonderful and would have been entirely impossible
in this fashion less than a decade ago.
 |
| Mom and dad's anniversary dinner with a beloved +1 |
Parenting
is usually full on in the moment and adding to that is difficult especially if
trying to create a tender record of your child . Thankfully, all these digital
platforms have made things much easier. But I am really grateful that Mu
has created this record of Elle's first year, and one that merges
perfectly with our travelogue. As Elle turned one, I found myself going back to
the beginning of BABE to read and see what was central to our collective lives
a year ago. Sometimes it recalls a great moments - bringing Elle 'home'
to our airbnb - and some bad moments - re-hospitalization due to Mu's mastitis.
Being able to see Elle on the blog as a 1 day old, or 1 week old, or 1 month old
is such a huge contrast to her still a baby present.
People
love the baby blog
And
for good reason. Elle is cute a button, oh so sweet and Mu has been wonderful
in sharing her/our journey. But I have to confess that I did not expect
the shift in blog focus to Elle's first year to bring a tangible upswing in our
readership of livingthekoroldream. You an see in the below chart from our
blogger dashboard how Mu's blogging of Elle's first year established a new,
better normal for our blog in terms of readership. Stepping back from
when we rolled this blog out, we have over 46k page views, from launch in
August 2012 to June 2016. That is many, many orders of magnitude more than we
ever expected.
And
Mu has crushed it with BABE authorship. Metrics and numbers are
interesting, but beyond the numbers it has been super cool to see so many loved
ones throughout this year and have them already engaged with Elle's
development. It is still surprising to get to someones house and have
them start talking about what was going in in Mu and elle's last week, or last
month. The continual reminder of the interaction between the digital and
the physical has been surprising, as someone who loves reading and consuming
digital media. I often forget about our own digital content and that
loved ones know so much more about Elle than they would have without
BABE.
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