| blogging our children into being |
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motor functions |
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The Dads |
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extended blogfamily |
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what is it? BlogSprogs is homeplace of The Crucial Three: the babies Turner, Matrullo and O'Connor Clarke. |
For the record...but then, isn't all of this?
It occurs to me that a lot of people (and getting to No.10 on the DayPop Top 40 presumably means it really is quite a lot) - a lot of people might be arriving at this blog and trying to figure out what all the fuss is about.
So in case you're wondering, here's a cross post of the original blog that triggered the sequence of events leading to what you now see before you.
There were a number of links and mentions on our respective blogs before we reached this stage, but the inflection point for me came a few hours after writing this:-
"Blog Sprogs
There’s something in the air...or in our wives, at any rate. I already knew Gary & Fiona Turner were expecting a baby any day now. Thanks to Gary, I just found out that Tom Matrullo’s missus is also expecting imminently.
And tonight I arrived home to discover the lovely 39-week pregnant Sausage on her knees scrubbing out the kitchen cabinets. She’s evidently been cleaning, sorting and tidying all day. As this will be our third time around, I’m pretty sure I know what this means. Nesting behaviour. Tonight could well be the night...
Wonder which blogger will sprog first?"
Next morning, I woke up full of beans and bouncing off to the office. En route, Echo & the Bunnymen on the Discman, had a curious thought. Posted it:
This might be the sappiest thought I've ever entertained ... or perhaps I'm onto something. As a follow up to the previous post, this thought occurred to me on the tube ride in to work this morning. Perhaps I can persuade Gary Turner and Tom Matrullo to join me in a Gangblog of sorts for our three respective babies. Call it 'BlogSprogs' or something of the sort.
Over the next few years, the three Dads could use it to post notes, thoughts, moments of reflection, pure sleep-deprived insanity, progress reports, that kind of thing - writing our tiny charges into being, as Weinberger put it, over the months and years ahead. Like a collaborative online version of one of those cheesy Hallmark baby books, but just way more fun (at least for us). Comparing the first smile, first solid food, first baby steps, first sinking feeling as we sign up for those second mortgages...
Of course, we'd really only be the temporary caretakers and guardians of this blog which we would, in due course, pass on to our growing children to continue the tradition. We'd be blog building a bridge between generations.
My hope is that our kids would grow up to cherish their unique and curious online friendship - three kids in three different countries, sharing their growing pains and personal triumphs through what might be the best vehicle so far invented for such a dialogue..."
And there you have it.
This is yet another manifestation of the way fatherhood stretches your time sense. More than any other ‘coming of age’ thing, being a Dad really shifts your gaze in to the future. For me, at least. Things like pensions, education savings plans, mutual funds suddenly become important and even (yikes) attractive.
Even your writing shifts. I type these words and imagine our unborn Opus one day reading them. Even, now that I’ve added a comments feature, responding to them.
We’re inventing time travel here. I’ve just written something that I know my growing son or daughter will one day add to in his or her own words.
Blogging’s a kind of acid like that – no longer in need of any mind expanding substance round here anyway; not with thoughts like this to boggle my neurons.