We’re celebrating our little blog’s first birthday! That’s exciting right?
It honestly doesn’t feel like it’s been a whole year… Then again, most of it has happened during 2020, and one of the curses of 2020 seems to be that time just doesn’t feel right—like it’s too moving too slowly and too quickly all at once somehow.
But I thought we’d do something silly and fun to celebrate. And what do you do for a first birthday? Give a kid their own cake to do with as they please!
So I bought us a tiny cake and parked it on the table for Nolan waiting for the hilarity to ensue. Of course, I was trying to take video of the whole thing, because that was kind of the point… But the funny thing with that kind of video is that we only get one take to do it right. That makes things a little complicated.
I know what I had hoped to end up with, but due to some miscommunication and general exhaustion from the guest of honor (and his grown-ups) things didn’t exactly come out “Pinterest-worthy”(Seriously, he looks genuinely disgusted when I try to get him to use his hands...) But honestly, most of my life isn’t Pinterest-worthy, so I shouldn’t be surprised. What was I thinking?
Anyway, here’s our little 1st Birthday Party.
Maybe it’s the fact that I was making this while thinking back on our first year, but it felt like this video was the perfect reflection on how this year has gone.
(Oh, crap—she’s drawing parallels again… What is with her and metaphors? Seriously?)
For real, though—I started our first year of blogging with ideas of what I thought it might become. I had hoped our introductory post might set a tone for the way I would write my posts. Honestly I’m not nearly as funny in my posts as I had hoped to be. I’d wanted to keep things light, sarcastic, and snarky but still heartfelt—maybe focusing on the day to day struggles that I try to laugh at or find some ounce of joy within. Instead I keep building these metaphors, and I find myself talking about much heavier things.
In the end, they both turn out okay… Just because they’re not necessarily the exact end product I pictured, it doesn’t mean they’re bad.
And given more time, better software or other resources, and other skills, could my video have turned out better? Absolutely. But just like the blog, I can only work with what I’ve got… As much as I’d hoped to have a better plan for content, advertising on our space, partnering with other bloggers or content producers or countless other things, this is a part-time endeavor for me. I’m learning what I can as I go, but life, my boys and even 2020 sometimes trip me up and slow me down. That’s just how life works.
In the end, I feel like both the video and the blog are still worth sharing. So of course we’re going to keep it up for as long as we can manage.
There is one other little metaphor in that cake, though.
This is how nice our little marble cake looked—at least from one angle.
But this is the reality of what was the cake really looked like.
There is a lot involved in living in a family—especially one with a kiddo that needs as much support as our Nolan. What people most often see isn’t always a good indicator of what really happens. One of the things that I’m most proud of is that we do our best to try to reveal the cake that’s underneath all of that beautiful frosting.
I’m a firm believer that we will never understand each other if we’re not willing to look past our first impressions. And what I want more than anything in this world for Nolan is a bit of understanding. I can’t speak for Kirk, but that’s big motivator for me. It’s why I wanted OurChaos.net to exist in the first place. And I’m happy that it gives me even a tiny opportunity for people like Nolan and families like ours to be understood in the world.
Looking forward, I hope to keep bringing that understanding to the world—exposing the cake beneath the frosting if you’ll indulge me… And I hope in time we’ll get better at building a safe place for community to flourish—where we can ask advice of each other and get input, and where we can work together to make the world a little better for the people we love.
It’s a lofty goal, but with time hopefully I’ll be able to develop some of those skills and gain some of the resources we’ll need to get there.
But my favorite thing about the last year with our little blog is all of you. Without anyone reading, we would have no reason to keep writing. And without your support, we would never be able to keep going.
From the bottom of our hearts, thank you. We appreciate you more than you could possibly know.