Tag Archives: blogging

Celebrate a year of LearnerMother with Lazy Jacks!

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I can’t believe that LearnerMother is a year old today! My clever little dashboard thingy tells me I’ve published 147 posts – I’m not quite sure how I managed that, given the reason I didn’t start a blog for so many years was that I thought I’d have nothing to write about! But managed it I have, and now I can’t really imagine life without  my little corner of the interweb.

The clever little dashboard thingy also tells me people have apparently been reading throughout the year – for which a HUGE thank you. It probably reveals too much of my mild neediness if I tell you that each share, like, retweet or comment is MUCH appreciated; and perhaps even more appreciated are the private messages I’ve received on occasion from people who are generous enough to say that a post I’ve written has been helpful in some small way.

So since I do the easy bit of regurgitating a mass of jumbled thoughts, and you do the hard bit of ploughing your way through the shizzle I stick out there, it seems only fitting that one of you lovely lot should get a present to celebrate this momentous occasion!

I racked my  brains for something fabulous to give away, and then I remembered that a review I did for Lazy Jacks Clothing a while back continues to be one of my most popular posts. Have a look at these gorgeous pictures to see why – and sign up for the Lazy Jacks mailing list or check out their Pinterest boards to see what’s coming up for Spring/Summer 2014!

So I used my best Polite Voice to ask the Lazy Jacks team if they’d be kind enough to offer an item from their catalogue for my birthday giveaway – and guess what, they said yes! One lucky LearnerMother reader will win a GORGEOUS child’s hooded snug top (worth £29.99) in their choice of fuchsia or navy, shown below, AND a very handy Lazy Jacks jute bag to boot! All you need to do is enter via the Rafflecopter below – leave a comment with your colour choice and size – and once you’ve done that, you can then gain bonus entries by following Lazy Jacks and/or LearnerMother on Twitter and Facebook. Good Luck!

LJ87C Fuschia LJ87C Twilight

Available in ages 1-2, 3-4, 5-6, 7-8, 9-10 & 11-13

LJ1 Seagull

a Rafflecopter giveaway

PS If you’ve enjoyed LearnerMother over the last year, I’d be all kinds of chuffed if you could spare a minute to nominate me in the ‘Best New Blog’ category of the Mum and Dad Blog Awards – THANK YOU!

MAD Blog Awards

The Husband was right…

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I was TOTALLY going to be cool about this, and pretend it wasn’t happening and all. But it turns out that my inner self is not going to allow that, by any means, so I’m going to do it, but just once. And then we shall never speak about it again.

Yep, I’m on about the Mum and Dad Blog Awards. When I started this shizzle nearly a year ago, I didn’t know there was such a thing as blogging awards. Shortly afterwards the nominations came out for the MADS, and I happened to mention them to the Husband, whereupon he rolled his eyes surreptitiously. But not surreptitiously enough.

‘What?’

‘Nothing!

‘WHAT??’

‘It’s just I can see where this is going. You’re going to get all competitive with this blogging thing of yours, aren’t you? It’ll be another one of your missions, like when you decided you were going to beat Paula Radcliffe at the marathon after 2 weeks at running club, or that you were going to grow a record breaking prize marrow on the basis that you once managed to keep a cactus alive for a couple of weeks.’

Obviously I flounced off muttering something about not being competitive at all and that I was blogging for ME and no-one else and no, I wasn’t interested in awards, thank you very much, and what did he mean anyway, and so on and so forth, while he just smirked in an annoying ‘you know I’m right’  fashion.

I bloody hate it when he’s right.

Obviously I’m not aiming for an actual award – that would be foolish. But I would dearly love to get a nomination – not least because I’d have an excuse to go to a swanky do in London where there will be no kids and lots of beer.

I also bloody hate asking for favours.

So I’m just going to say this quickly and slightly embarrassedly – please please please would you consider nominating me in the ‘Best New Blog’ section? It’d have to be that one because the other categories are all about proper things like craft, or photography, or being entertaining, or heaven forbid BABIES and I am unashamedly rubbish at all those. Which also technically means it’s my only chance, ever, to get nominated because next year I won’t be new any more and *sobs* I’ll STILL be rubbish at craft and photography and I sure as hell ain’t having another baby at my age…Tell you what. I’ll shut up now.

Oh…except to say this – whether you nominate me or not, a massive THANK YOU for reading LearnerMother over the last 12 months 🙂

MAD Blog Awards

Blogging and kids

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I had a message from someone the other day in response to a post on my blog; it was a private message, because as she said, ‘my elder two don’t need to see their mother’s issues on social media’.  Her kids are older than mine, but it struck a chord with me as it’s something that’s been playing on my mind recently – the whole blogging and kids thing – both in terms of their online safety, and their privacy.

I’m aware that I am effectively creating an online footprint for my kids, before they are old enough to do it themselves. For this reason, I am careful with their identities online. I never use their names on the blog, and I use photos that are recognisable to friends and relatives, without being full face, identifiable shots. Occasionally I’ve posted a Silent Sunday which is more recognisable because I love the photo, and in this case I just mark the post as ‘private’ after a week or so.

Thanks to this article from Mediocre Mum, I do a regular google check of all my kids’  names – have a read of it to find out why you should probably do the same if you maintain any sort of online presence. And I also check the inbound links to photos on the blog, suggested by Leslie on this article at Scottish Mum.  So I’m reasonably happy that I am behaving sensibly in terms of their online safety.

But their privacy – that’s a much more tricky issue for me to wrestle with.  I think I am respectful and sensible in what I share, but will they agree? How will they feel in the future about reading about their milestones online, knowing that some of their friends’ parents may be reading the same thing? And what will it be like for them discovering things they don’t know about me?  I mean I think I have done a reasonable job so far of protecting them from the knowledge that I’m a complete muppet, but a few minutes digging around these pages will soon reveal the truth. Poor buggers, how are they going to cope with THAT?

I’ve made a start on giving the blog a bit of a separate identity, by setting up specific Facebook, Twitter and Google+ profiles that I can use to share blog posts; (really? Would you? Oh how kind! Yes, just click there, and there and there and I’ll love you forevs.) The idea is that I will move away from sharing LearnerMother posts on my ‘me’ accounts. That way when the kids are old enough to set up their own social media they won’t see my witterings in their feed at least. But making the blog less in their faces, does not take away from the fact that it exists.

What do you think? Have you changed the way you blog as your kids get older? If you have older kids, how do they feel about what you write? I’d love to hear from you!

Thank you for reading, as ever!