I've been sharing our lives with you all for 3 1/2 years now. Potentially, I have let the entire world in on my life, my thoughts, my adventures, my ups and downs, for the last 3 1/2 years. Life is very different. In May of 2006, Joey was still in preschool. He speech was so limited, I actually blogged about even the hints of
conversation, though Joey was still using single-word responses. We went crazy with joy at signs of
pretend play. The huge, dramatic
meltdowns of a frustrated child were far more common. I remember that
first comment from Maddy, that first hint that I wasn't just talking to myself out here. We were in the midst of
IEP Hell, trying to get footing, trying to get a master's in special education practice and law in the few short months we had to master the system and the skills for getting Joey was he needed. We needed to know what he actually needed. At the same time, we had Andy to raise and learn about, and
his needs to understand and master.
Yeah, we've come a long way. In that time, I have seen other folks with wider-read blogs, blogs that started and took off. OUr little corner has remained a comfy corner with my squishy-comfy couch, hot chocolate on the stove, and plenty of cozy quilts to snuggle under. I don't do the things that make a blog expand and take on life of its own. I don't advertise, I don't label and tag, and don't do a lot of jumping up and down and making noise elsewhere. I don't do reviews, unless I feel like something out to be brought to your attention because I think it would be helpful and awesome. I have never been to
BlogHer. If I get 100 hits in a day, that's a big deal, and I check out what I talked about to cause the spike.
I started out trying to help folks. That was the idea behind this blog- to offer what we were learning, knowing others needed to know, and fast. Being a quiet little corner can help that, because you don't get the tramping of unwelcome feet, you don't see a lot of the venom from having huge numbers of people with vast diversity of opinions battling it out in your comments. I can share experiences here that might not normally be put on a huge blog, more pictures, more little vignettes of life with children generally, and with an autistic child, a very beautiful autistic child, specifically. I can provide those little reminders that life is good, you can do this, and we're all in it together. After all, that's what life is- we're all in this together. The Earth is really quite small, you know. A little comfy corner of the cosmos.
Perhaps being a bigger blog (and a better-written blog), along the lines of
Whitterer or
Stimeyland or
Maternal Instincts, I might reach more people. Or maybe not. One thing you learn as a teacher, just because you give the lecture and answer the questions doesn't mean everybody learns. Yet somehow I find being that comfy corner of the web with the squishy couches and ice cream to be something else the community needs. Maybe that's just the way I am.
