People ask me all the time what my children think of the fact that I often write essays and blog posts about them. So my budding writer, 12 year old E decided he would address this issue himself in this Very Special Blog Post. Take it away, E!

Created with Admarket’s flickrSLiDR.

My mom has been blogging about me my whole life. Sometimes it’s good and sometimes it’s bad. For example a couple weeks ago I was talking to my friend when one of my teachers said “Hey Elliot I was reading your mom’s blog…” Then she said some random thing about me. I really didn’t care that much but you probably know how it feels. Since my mom is also a writer my language arts teacher is always telling me how talented she is in front of the class. That’s the good part. My mom has this one book that she wrote an entry about me when I was born because I was almost dead or something like that. None of my friends ask me anything about it because, well 12 year old boys don’t really talk about what their moms do. I think that it’s good for her to write, especially big stuff so we can rake in the moula. She’s been talking about writing another book WITHOUT ME, which is okay but I love when she writes about me. Well that pretty much tells you what it’s like and the main answer for this is it’s good. – ERCG

Parenting question of the day: Is “freaking” an inappropriate descriptive word for ‘tweens and teens to use with adults and in public?

As in, “That’s freaking awesome.”

I’m leaning toward yes on this one. But I am something of a prude about kids and language, which I tend to observe as a southern thing.

Anyway, what are your thoughts. Let me know in the comments below.

Spanking – or lack thereof – is what I am blogging about over at Babble today.

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

Our Halloween this year was off-kilter. Because I was really sick in the weeks leading up to the actual event, our usual family pumpking carving event with the cousins didn’t happen.  On the night we finally got it done, I was still unable to get out of bed, so my mother and Dr. Neighbor (the guy professor edition, as opposed to the female MD edition) helped Jon oversee J and E in getting their respective jack o’ lanterns carved at our kitchen table. My mom had come up from Bell Buckle to spend that night following my first full day back at work since I had gotten sick. She helped with dinner and with general kid wrangling because she knew I would be exhausted. And she was right.

All three younger kids have been anxious and out of sorts  in the past month due to my illness (which really did end up lasting an entire month, start to finish) and other challenging family issues that we are dealing with at the moment, including the fact that our plan to have Eldest Child live at home after his recent return from Big Learning Experience has fallen through. We have all been struggling with this, each in our own way.  His younger siblings were stressed by the conversations that led up to this decision, and are now stressed by adjusting to their big brother’s absence from our house, which wasn’t what we expected after his eight months away.  All of this has made for a really hard autumn season for our family, and as a result, no one seemed to have their usual enthusiasm for the jack o’ lantern carving.

But somehow, with the help from my mother & Dr. Neighbor that night, it got done. J started out by insisting that she had NO interest in joining in without participation by the absent H and her cousins (she was feeling very glum about everything), but the grown-ups insisted, and within just a few minutes, she had cheered up and gotten into the spirit of things.  C thought it was great fun, as this was the first year that she understood what was going on. By the end of the evening, the children had turned out three pretty good jack o’ lanterns, although definitely not our family’s most impressive efforts ever, and Dr. Neighbor had done this wonderful saute/roast thing with the pumpkin seeds – best pumpkin seeds I have ever had, hands down.  We did the best we could considering the gloomy household mood.

A few days later, it was time for Halloween. J and E’s schedule happened to have them at their father’s house on Halloween proper, so 2 year old C was the only child in the household that day.   All week, she had been enjoying dressing up in various loaned costumes (bunny, dragon) passed along by an older cousin.  She surely would have enjoyed some trick or treating up and down our street. But on the 31st, it was pouring rain all day – a bad harbinger for Halloween night activities. Then, for only the second time in her life, she refused to nap. That meant that by the time she and Jon returned from the church Halloween party in the late afternoon, she was hysterically exhausted.

Note glazed expression and flushed cheeks. Portrait of an almost-sick bunny-toddler.

It was also pretty obvious by Halloween afternoon that she was getting sick  – fever erupted within 24 hours. Her cheeks were flushed and her mood was rotten. She had clearly been picking up on my stress, and that day, she finally began letting us know that she was stressed, too – whining, clinging, and flinging herself on the floor in floods of tears if you looked at her wrong.

By 6pm, she was out for the night.  This left Jon and me in the unusual situation of having not one of the four kids around for the actual holiday festivities. It ended up being a very low-key, all adult Halloween. And frankly, that was fantastic.  Dr. Neighbor hung out for part of the evening and fixed a yummy pasta dish that involved spicy sausage. He prepared a special beverage I have been known to enjoy – one that only he makes as well.  I laid around on the couch in my bathrobe and we three – Jon, Dr. Neighbor and I – listened to Girl Talk (not appropriate with kids in the room) with the guys answering the occasional doorbell to hand out candy to the few trick or treaters who braved the drizzle in the ‘hood to approach out front door.  I was feeling so antisocial that evening that even offering cheery greetings to kids in costumes seemed daunting.

So yeah, we’ve had a rough go of it lately at our house, and in some ways Halloween seemed like the denouement.  But at least we had pumpkins. Back in 2005, I stupidly waited until the last minute to go out for pumpkins, only to find that no pumpkins were to be had anywhere at any price in the greater Knoxville area.  In a fit of desperation, I brought home….decorative gourds.

Yes, my children had GOURDS instead of pumpkins that Halloween. They were pretty good natured about it actually.

As you can see, E actually fell asleep on the floor at my sister’s house that night, clutching his gourd. He really took to it. I finally had to insist that we throw it out when it began attracting fruit flies in his room, where he kept it for longer than a good parent would have allowed

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I really have no excuse for The Year of the Gourds except poor planning on my part. I’m sure it’s one of the stories about me that my kids will tell in therapy.  But I can now take small solace in the fact that my wildly capable and well organized friend K had a similar experience this year. She couldn’t find pumpkins either, and her kids ended up with….jack o’ loupes.

Lately I’ve been thinking a lot about being a bad parent.  Specifically, I’ve been thinking about ways in which I have been a bad parent. H turned 18 a few weeks ago, so I have now had ample opportunity to screw up. And I have, in big ways and small. In important ways and in ways my kids will never remember.

That’s what I’m blogging about over at Babble today.

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

Hey Knoxvillians: I need to hire a responsiible nanny-helper with a car & good driving record to help me get various offspring to afterschool activities and events. Need someone to start ASAP. Other hours possible sometimes, but primarily a 3pm-6:30 pm weekday gig. Great parttime job for college student. Will rigorously check references and will do background check.

Please send interested folks my way via Facebook email or my regular email: katie.granju@gmail.com Thanks!

I’m blogging about how much part-time parenting is kind of the pits for those of us who are divorced over at Babble today. Let me know what you think.

My latest Babble blog post is about how different each of my three eldest offspring are with regard to being willing to talk about their potential romantic interests with me:

If I hadn’t already mothered my way through the teenage years with one kid who would clearly endure waterboarding before telling me whether he has any romantic interest in anyone in particular, I would be patting myself on the back about now, confidently smug in the “fact” that my obviously superlative parenting skills were the sole reason that J is so open with me about this stuff. But honestly, I haven’t done anything any differently with Kid #2 than I did with Kid #1 when it comes to encouraging these sorts of conversations. So I know that this is one instance where Judith Rich may be onto something, because in this developmental area, nature clearly kicks nurture to the curb; some teenagers are obviously born with a willingness to tolerate, and even indulge their mothers’ annoying curiosity about their love lives, while others are not.

And now along comes E, who just started 6th grade last month. E has always had a certain way with the ladies, as well as a natural confidence that I feel pretty certain will assure him no small measure of success in the teenage Dating Game. He’s also much more chatty in general than his older brother, H, who is naturally quite reserved and private. So I erroniously assumed that E would be more like his sister J (and Greg Brady) when it comes to openly telling mom exactly what’s up with his love life. But only 6 weeks into middle school, he has already let me know that he’s still trying to decide where he will fall on the continuum of openness.

Read the rest over at Babble.