Like so many mamas online today, I am grieving the loss of a sweet toddler girl I never actually met, little Layla Grace, who died at home yesterday after a short but very intense battle with a particularly cruel form of childhood cancer called Neuroblastoma. Layla Grace was the same age as my youngest child.

Layla Grace

I learned about Layla Grace’s battle – and her mother’s blog about that battle – from my sister and other friends on Facebook. In recent months, mothers from coast to coast and beyond have been following Layla’s battle and her parents’ struggle until the end came yesterday. Layla’s mother’s blogging and Twitter posts were eloquent and brutally honest. By bravely sharing her family’s heartbreaking journey, Layla’s mama helped raise awareness about Neuroblastoma in a way nothing ever has before. Through her sensitive blogging, Layla’s mother also led other moms all over the world to rethink their frustration with that day’s toddler tantrum or the sleepless night spent nursing the baby or the preschooler’s crayon masterpiece on the new sofa. After hearing of Layla’s latest day spent in the hospital or declining at home in her parents’ bed, a little mess in our own homes or another fit at the grocery store seemed like a blessing rather than an annoyance. Reading Layla’s mother’s posts, we knew she would give anything to have just one more “normal” day with her beautiful two year old daughter, frustrations and messes included.

There but by the grace of God, we all thought as we read about little Layla.

Parents who followed Layla Grace’s illness and passing also bonded online, becoming a real, vibrant community of caring around this lovely child and her parents, demonstrating what I’ve known about social media for a long time now. While I make my living helping companies use online tools and platforms to reach out to consumers, I approach my job with HUGE respect for the “community” and “social” elements of the work that I do. These relationships we forge online are real and meaningful and can change lives; they aren’t just vehicles for marketing. The online community that grew up around Layla Grace’s journey demonstrated that. It’s a beautiful thing, and the reason I’ve been singing the praises of this thing called social media for more than a decade now; online community and relationships can be a truly meaningful part of our lives if we approach them with the same respect and honor that we accord to our “real” relationships.

I didn’t know Layla Grace in person, and I’ve never met her parents. But I can tell you right now that the sadness I feel about Layla’s death isn’t “virtual” in any way. It’s very, very real.

Rest in peace, Layla Grace.

And to all of you reading this, I hope you give your babies – no matter what age they may be – an extra hug today.

My latest post at AckermannDigital…

I am really pleased to announce the launch of a new blog from Ackermann PR, where I am employed as Director of Digital & Social Media. We’re calling it Ackermann Digital, and along with my friend, Ackermann colleague and co-blogger, Shane Rhyne, I’ll be over at Ackermann Digital on a regular basis, ruminating and offering my observations on all-things-interactive.

If you visit the new blog, you will see that I’ve begun moving quite a bit of my archived digital and social-media related blog content to live in its new home, and I’ve also begun posting fresh material on these topics. So please go check Ackermann Digital out if you feel so inclined, and I would be most appreciative if you want to add the link to your own blogroll or RSS reader.

Thanks! – Katie

There has been a lot of discussion in recent months about the impact that the very recent mass adoption & use rate of Facebook and Twitter is having – or will have - on “old school” blogs, like this one.

Since I’ve been blogging regularly at the same domain (two, actually, but they both point here) for about seven years now, I think I have a pretty good body of anecdotal data with which to consider the ramifications to traditional blogs and bloggers from the social media tipping point that arrived in the past 18 months, you know, when seemingly EVERYBODY IN AMERICA  suddenly joined Facebook, Twitter and Linked In.

Here are my observations, from my own blogging experience, as well of from my actual blog analytics, which I’ve observed over the years:

• Post Facebook/Twitter tipping point, I find that I am more likely to take an interesting idea and use it as a pithy, quick hit on Facebook or Twitter rather than turn it into an actual blog post.  As a result, my blog is now less  “sparkly,” for lack of a better way to put it.  My personality, humor and day-to-day activities now seem to end up in my Facebook and Twitter status udates  (friend me on both!), while my actual blog posts these days tend to be more like short form essays, dealing with more high-concept topics and issues.  And that’s not necessarily a good thing in terms of my blog being the primary platform where people actually get to know me.  However, to be fair, that shift over time in the tone and content of my blogging here isn’t entirely due to Twitter and Facebook.   In my own case, as a very early-adopter “mommyblogger” who has been doing this a long time,  some of that evolution away from so much “here’s the funny thing or the really painful thing that happened with Katie and her kids today” blogging has come as H, J and E – the “blogged about” -  have gotten older.  They now have vetting power over any blogging I ever do that references them in any way.  And although they have generally enjoyed having a mom who is a writer/blogger (or at least they have enjoyed the food and shoes that the writing has paid for over the years), they are no longer okay much/most of the time with me relating some specific, funny thing  that one of them says at the dinner table.   At age 4 or 7, they didn’t care.  As middle schoolers and teenagers, they do.  And I totally understand that.  So as the big kids in the family have gotten older, I have also become more cognizant of the fact that at a certain point, their childhood stories are THEIRS to tell, in whatever way and to whomever THEY choose.  If I am the only one telling these stories – via my blog or through essays published elsewhere – and I do it before they ever get a chance to run their own memories  of our family life through the sepia sieve of hindsight, they will never get a chance to remember things, or tell things in their own way.  I want all four of my children to one day sit around a table together, laughing and sharing memories of their childhoods and our home life,  debating who is remembering this Christmas morning mishap or that day at the beach correctly.  I don’t want my blogging to replace their memories to such a degree that they don’t have those wonderful, “remember when” conversations that adult siblings have together. Of course, C is still young enough that I can exploit her for commercial gain for a good long time yet before she objects (I kid! I kid!) While I do believe that all of the writing I have done (and will still do) about our lives together will one day offer a wonderful adjunct for their own memories – a sort of digital scrapbook or diary – I never want it to replace what they remember and believe and want to talk or write about.  So yeah, Twitter and Facebook HAVE changed my blog’s content, but they aren’t the whole impetus behind those changes over time.

• In the past 18 months – since Twitter and Facebook hit the big time – my blog’s traffic (meaning how many visitors I get and how often they visit) has remained steady or grown, but my comments have dropped DRASTICALLY.  This is the biggest impact that Facebook in particular has had on my blog. I used to routinely get dozens of comments on most blog posts.  Lately, I am lucky if I get 5-10.  I can see from my analytics that more people are visiting my blog year over year, and are hanging around and reading multiple posts, and then returning for more on a regular basis. But my blog readers are now much more silent.  Very few comments.  I believe that this is almost entirely due to Facebook. The people who used to chat with others or debate things or talk about what I’d blogged that day in the comments below each of my blog posts now have those conversations on Facebook instead.  In fact, when I publish a new post here at this blog, a link to it automatically goes to my Facebook wall (I use Networked Blogs for this).  I can see from my traffic stats that lots  of people are indeed following the Facebook link and coming here to the blog to read the post.  That’s the good part of Facebook’s impact on my blog; the bad part is that they then wait until they get back to Facebook to talk about the post, and they do it in the comments below the link to my blog post…on Facebook.  I love hearing from people about what I write – whether that’s here on the blog or over at Facebook.  But I do really miss having a volume of comments here that made my blog feel more like a real community than it does currently.  With all of the comments on my content happening over at Facebook,  my blog – which is very dear to me after years of sharing my life here with readers who have held my hand through good times and bad – feels a little dead, a little empty. And that really does bother me.  It’s not that I want more comments for the pageviews they generate – I am getting plenty of pageviews  – but post-Facebook tipping point, my readers are sort of silent here at the blog.  They come and go without saying hello,  sharing their own stories,  or telling me who they are and how they found the blog. I even miss some of the “heated” (that’s one way to put it!) disagreements among readers that were a common occurrence back in the day (the day being all of the years I blogged up until 2009.  And yes, I do blame Facebook  for that. Damn you, Facebook, and your comment-sucking ways!

• Traffic growth for my blog in the past 8 months-12 months in particular has been primarily driven by Twitter and Facebook,  rather than by search engines.  I used to get A WHOLE LOT more blog traffic from search engine queries, some of them very bizarre (You don’t want to know some of them. Ick. So disturbing to look at one’s blog analytics and realize what people are out there searching for.)  In fact, some of my favorite longtime readers/commenters originally found me when they typed something into Google or Yahoo or even AskJeeves (yes, I have been blogging for THAT LONG!)  that had absolutely nothing to do with me. Example: What do I do when my child’s pet Python escapes and is loose in the house?”  But the search query somehow landed them here, at this blog. And then they stayed, and then they came back again and again.  And then many of them started joining in the conversation in the comments below my posts.  But lately, my search engine traffic is down precipitously, while my referrals from Twitter and Facebook status updates and wall posts – my own and those from other people referencing me or my blog – are up to a huge degree.  When I get some free time (ha!), I need to sit down, and with Jon’s help, try to figure out what’s going on with the SEO issue on my blog, because the change has been incredibly dramatic over the past year.  I want to figure out if there is any clear correlation between Facebook’s explosion and the fact that it appears to me that fewer people are searching for topics that used to be the bread and butter of my search engine traffic – things like breastfeeding advice, co-sleeping stories, etc – the kinds of search queries that used to be a huge driver of women and moms to my blog.  My suspicion is that women are now simply asking these sorts of questions in their status updates, and then letting the info come to them via their network of friends and friends-of-friends on Facebook.  Instead of going out to find the info, they are attracting the info they need directly to them from people they already trust and “know,” at least to some degree. That sort of high-influence information carries much more weight with a woman wanting to know what high chair she should buy than some blog post that I – a complete stranger – wrote about my preferred high chair brand, and which she then found with a totally impersonal Google search.

So those are a few of my observations regarding how Facebook and Twitter are impacting my blog and my blogging.  I’d be really interested to hear from other bloggers – particularly those of you who have been at it for more than two or three years.

You can leave your thoughts, ideas and observations in…..the comments below

So tonight I had supper and drinks with Well Known Person and her extremely entertaining husband. We had a fantastic time  – genuinely fun. Even if we were not working on a big, huge media project together, this was fun – straight up. She’s great. He’s great.I can see us being friends under any circumstances.

We finished dinner & drinks and I handed over my credit card to the waitress (who had been borderline annoying all night anyway).

DECLINED.

My credit card was….DECLINED!

Quelle Horreur!

I’ve been broke before in years past. There have been times in my life when I would have worried through the whole meal that my credit card would be…DECLINED. But this is not one of those times.  There is absolutely NO REASON WHATSOEVER that my credit card should have been refused…by a chirpy 22 year old waitress…while out with really terrific people whom I intended to entertain (did I mention that they are more than a little well known? Did I mention that I actually, genuinely liked them and we had been having a fantastic time?)

They were terrifically polite. We all tried to pretend my card had not just been declined.  They offered to pay;  I shrugged it off, attempting to make excuses, while realizing that the more I protested, the more pathetic it sounded.

Thank God Dr. Neighbor was sitting with us.  He swooped up the bill, changed the topic with finesse, and we all moved on.

But despite how much fun we had, and how great and full of promise the project is, all I can think about as I get ready to hit the sack for the night is how embarrassing that was. My best guess is that due to the way the evening played out, I used the card four times in a short time period at several different downtown Knoxville venues.

They (credit card company) were suspicious. But I was mortified.

I will be calling Citiband (Chase?) tomorrow.

Sigh.

I get to work with lots of great bloggers on various projects that I either produce or am a part of, but I am especially enjoying having the opportunity to work with Heather Armstrong on something ridiculously neat-o & innovative. She’s just as wickedly funny & nice as her bazillions of readers find her to be on her blog and elsewhere. (Nope, can’t spill… just yet, but if you are a Dooce fan, you will love this. Stay tuned…)

Here’s the video from my guest spot on the ABC News “Moms Get Real” show this week, with Juju Chang and Romi Lassaly from True Mom Confessions. The topic was drugs and kids, and as a guest panelist, I discussed the VERY significant ways my views on parenting teenagers has evolved over time, based on having now seen one child to the age of 18.

I plan to write a lengthy, detailed blog post on this very soon (maybe over at TMC as a guest blogger), but for now, you can watch what I have to say on th show, should you have any interest. If you don’t have any interest in watching it, here’s the thumbnail version:  just imagine washed out Katie, without enough lipstick or cheek color (NOTE TO SELF: MORE MAKE-UP FOR ON-AIR APPEARANCES! WAY MORE.), explaining that she sure wishes she had been stricter with Child #1, and more intrusive and bossy, and that she intends to be far more intrusive, bossy and mean with Children 2,3,4 during the high school years.  Imagine that, and no need to watch the video

This is really fascinating. The NYT Freakonomics bloggers argue that early weaning from the breast is significantly impacting the declining number of females among India’s overall population:

Stanford’s Seema Jayachandran and Princeton’s Ilyana Kuziemko argue that a preference for boys tempts mothers to wean daughters significantly sooner than their sons.

The earlier they wean, the earlier they can again conceive and roll the dice that this time it’ll be a boy.

Meanwhile, the weaned daughters have been deprived of the health benefits breast-milk and nursing may provide and are more vulnerable to illness and death, particularly in the developing world where the study is focused.

The authors conclude that the “breastfeeding factor” accounts for 14 percent of India’s “missing girls.” More boys survive infancy than girls.

Today is the 4th anniversary of my toddler cousin W’s passing. If you have a moment, go leave some words of support and love for his mama.

Feel free to share the link, so others in our online community of parents can do the same.

I love this post from Meagan Francis about whether it’s ever acceptable to bring a baby into an “adult” venue or event. She lays out the issue exactly as I would, with a nod to both the rights and the responsibilities of parents.

The very first essay I ever sold to a paying publication was a piece I sold to the Chicago Tribune in 1995 in response to an op-ed they had run from some curmudgeonly guy who said that children should basically never be taken into public places, particularly places where he was paying for food. I can’t find a copy of it anywhere, but my primary point was that a culture that believes young children should be mostly segregated from the world of adult activity is a culture that is in effect, banishing women to a certain invisibility. Banning babies is a de facto policy that bans women with babies.

This is Jon and me, hittin’ the town with C when she was about 3 weeks old, I think. Yes, we went and had a drink at our favorite brewpub. With the baby in the sling. As you can see from the photo, she was a real rabble rouser that night.

Now, having said that, I do not believe people should allow their babies or young children to actively disrupt other diners at a restaurant or play or neighborhood meeting, etc. There is a balance, and I think that our society tends to have trouble finding it with this issue. We swing wildly from pronouncements that any woman who occasionally wants to bring a child along to an event or job site or activity (generally because she cannot afford or find acceptable childcare) must not want to be taken seriously, to finding ourselves in restaurants where one inconsiderate parent ruins everyone’s meal (including other, less noisy kids who are also trying to eat in peace) by allowing his two year old to scream for 30 minutes without realizing it’s time to get a to-go bag and leave.

But go read Meagan’s blog post. As with everything she writes, it’s just darn good.