October 23, 2001

1:34 PM

I was just over at Matt's blog, and he mentions that his favorite baby blog is evohr.org. Personally, mine is henrysdiary.com. What's yours? Or do you have problems with this sort of site... do you think it's exploitive or otherwise dangerous?
posted by silusGROK (44 comments total)

my fave: noahrose.com
posted by saralovering at 1:40 PM on October 23, 2001

No, every baby should end up on the Library of Congress database. Or the Smithsonian at the very least. In a few years time, when they grow up, it will be fun for them.

Sorry this was just a pathetic attempt to justify how sweet babies - and cats and today's special, dogs - invariably are. Though I do miss photos of the parents as I'm a sucker for that old "does she/he look more like her/his father or mother" game.
posted by MiguelCardoso at 1:41 PM on October 23, 2001

I maintain one for my little girl - but would never give out the URL in a public way. Unless I know the people who might see it, it's just a bit too creepy for me - plus I wouldn't want to inflict "baby pictures" on an unwitting visitor ;)
posted by kokogiak at 1:44 PM on October 23, 2001

The twins at evohr.org are the same age as my little girl, so it was fascinating to see the very-familiar-yet-very-different experiences that family is having.

Good stuff, good link.
posted by marknau at 1:44 PM on October 23, 2001

i have to say i don't like the concept of baby blogs that i've seen very much. not that it's stupid, or anything, or you're wrong to look at it. the ones i've seen have always been like: well, we did this. we went here. they crawled! look at them now! that they're babies doesn't seem terribly interesting to me; i suppose my standards are set too highly, or possibly i am talking out of my ass.
posted by moz at 1:47 PM on October 23, 2001

Funny marknau - they are almost the same age as my girl too. (she's 15 months). This will likely be a self-selecting audience in this thread, no?
posted by kokogiak at 1:48 PM on October 23, 2001

mine would have to be: http://stronk.net/merel

so cute! (but aren't all babies so? I have yet to see an ugly baby)
posted by ewwgene at 1:48 PM on October 23, 2001

i love henry's diary. i've been following it almost since mike began it and it's very well done. not cheesy or boring and it definitely marks where henry "is" at a given time for future reference. i think henry will really appreciate it when he is older.
posted by centrs at 1:56 PM on October 23, 2001

I work in the online privacy industry, and the idea that someone would put that much detail online (and googleable!) just creeps the hell out of me. But that doesn't keep me from visiting my favorite site daily for updates... well, the dad's site daily for my fix, and updates of the child's site.

Anyway, just like yesterday's photo albums, today's baby-blogs are certain to contain a photo or two that will serve as a useful tool for future blackmail.
posted by silusGROK at 1:59 PM on October 23, 2001

I've also been doing one since February (our daughter was born in May). I don't assume anyone outside our immediate circle of friends and family even give a rat's ass, but I don't have any problem with the rest of the world looking at it. You can find it easily enough from the main page of my blog, so I won't explicitly self-link it here.

Like any other blog thing, I think there's an interesting dance between personal and public, because you go into a blog project knowing full well that anyone in the world can look at it.

One of my reasons for doing a baby blog was to have sort of a central way of communicating to all the people in my life who do want to know about the baby, see the pictures, watch the videos, etc. without having to tell and re-tell the same stuff over and over again to each new audience. I guess that's not much different than those annoying form letters people send out at Christmas, is it?

Anyway, as with the rest of my website/blog, it gives me something to play with, it has turned out to be an excellent way for me to keep a journal of my thoughts and impressions of the baby's first months, and I even have a small following of regular readers who complain when I don't post an entry on time.
posted by briank at 2:02 PM on October 23, 2001

Er... dang... missed the best one...

"or three".
posted by silusGROK at 2:04 PM on October 23, 2001

People who create baby blogs should be forced to read other people's baby blogs. And then go to someone's house with young kids. They'll be volunteering at the White House mailroom soon after.
posted by archeopterix at 2:14 PM on October 23, 2001

Personally, I don't find most stories about ordinary babies to be terribly engaging, though I don't have a problem with posting them - privacy issues aside. I do, however, have issues with the mock first-person accounts of babies' lives. They're just creepy. I'm not going to self-link or anything, but I posted about this back in June, and wrote that I have issues, to say the least, with parents treating their children's identities as things that could be donned and shed at will. There's something kind of eerie about this suggestion that Baby's body with Mommy or Daddy's thoughts is anything other than icky.
posted by isomorphisms at 2:14 PM on October 23, 2001

My favorite baby related website is Melt's. Yes, that kid has a huge head and the best monkey evah.
posted by corpse at 2:22 PM on October 23, 2001

Damn babies.

Let 'em go out and do some goddam work for a change if they want me to pay any attention to 'em.

Lazy bastards.

[except my nephew of course]
posted by Kafkaesque at 2:23 PM on October 23, 2001

I think they're great for families and friends, and generically cute but otherwise uninteresting for people who don't personally know the babies. And people who post things on the internet should know enough about how it works to assess privacy concerns before they do it.

I agree that parents writing in the kid's voice is creepy.
posted by kirkaracha at 2:41 PM on October 23, 2001

only when thier irrelevance rises to incredible proportions will i deign to show the slightest interest in baby blogs. i find thier present cultural influence quite intimidating.
posted by quonsar at 3:08 PM on October 23, 2001

I am impressed by the work of Ann Geddes in the field of making babies look stupid, though.
posted by Kafkaesque at 3:22 PM on October 23, 2001

fiona elise. she's amazing. so is her dad.
posted by phooey at 3:24 PM on October 23, 2001

to paraphrase an older saying: children should be seen, not blogged.
Wmen go nuts about babies; guys care only about their own. All othes are like fish in a tnak: who cares about them?
posted by Postroad at 3:36 PM on October 23, 2001

My parents and family love the blog I keep for Jasper, my three-year-old (on Monday). Great way to keep people up-to-date with him, and it is a good way to keep a diary for him without picking up the pen and paper. I hope he appreciates it someday!
posted by adampsyche at 3:39 PM on October 23, 2001

[they] say if you stare long enough, you'll see a black helicopter everywhere you look.
posted by webchick at 4:30 PM on October 23, 2001

I find these baby blogs to be terribly boring, silly, and unimaginative. I never go to them and I think that whoever is doing one has too much time on their hands. They should spend it playing with the kid instead, in my opinion.

That said, they do have redeeming value for a selective audience. Random people are likely to feel the way I described above, but if you know the baby/parents, you would probably surf on by every so often to check out the photos/news.

In any case, they are overdoing it, but hey, if they get a kick out of it, good for them. I'm not trying to knock them or anything.
posted by Witold at 5:44 PM on October 23, 2001

I find these baby blogs to be terribly boring, silly, and unimaginative. I never go to them and I think that whoever is doing one has too much time on their hands.

and, in this particular example, the difference between plain-old-vanilla-much-ado-about-oneself blogs and baby blogs is ... ???
posted by kilroy at 6:23 PM on October 23, 2001

I find these baby blogs to be terribly boring, silly, and unimaginative.

I have more fun with my son's blog than my own. I really like it when my wife participates; her perception of things from my son's voice is incredible, and it provides an insight into things that I wouldn't normally consider. I may be a tad biased, but no blog is for everyone. There are some that I like that others I know can't stand, so they don't read.

whoever is doing one has too much time on their hands.

What kilroy says. Is there any difference, except that it may be less self-centered? I mean, most people I know think that keeping any blog is a sign of too much time on your hands. What's the difference?

They should spend it playing with the kid instead, in my opinion.

Who's to say they don't? You? Maybe they work on them at their lunch break.

I am just curious that you think that because you find them x, y, and z, that others must feel the way you do. As evidenced as well by you speaking in the second person in your second paragraph. You turned the "I" into the "you" as if you were speaking for the rest of us.
posted by adampsyche at 7:03 PM on October 23, 2001

I never go to them and I think that whoever is doing one has too much time on their hands. They should spend it playing with the kid instead, in my opinion.

Well, then, I'll be sure to get my kids out of bed between 1 and 2 in the morning so that we can play, since that's the average hour during which I work on the (private, passworded, family-only) blog I maintain for all five of them. I'm sure they'll benefit greatly from that.

In any case, this is I think one of the best things about the blogging format/genre. It allows parents a way to make an easily-updated, multimedia chronicle of their childrens' lives before the kids are able to do it for themselves. Before there were baby journals/blogs, we were stuck with the constraints of pre-fab "baby books" (which were a difficult fit if you have a special needs kid or if you have twins) or spent many many more hours than blogging demands making our own customised scrapbooks.

Each of my kids has had something written about every day of their lives. I certainly can't say that -- I can't even say that I've chronicled something about myself every day since I've been blogging or keeping a journal. Each year I catalogue off the posts for each child posts on their birthday, and burn them to CD. One day they will have a series of discs that they can enjoy as a piece of their personal histories or they can use as coasters as they see fit -- but if they enjoy them, what better gift could I give them?
posted by Dreama at 7:23 PM on October 23, 2001

I have a son.
I find other people's baby blogs, home movies, and pictures excruciatingly boring. But as a dad, I also understand the unbearable urge to document and share.

It's very damn cool that there are parents out there who take enough of an interest in their child's development to be so obsessive about understanding and preserving it. I keep my son's blog in my head. There just isn't enough time in the day to write down these things, when I know that only myself and my wife would be even remotely interested in them.
posted by glenwood at 9:14 PM on October 23, 2001

thanks for the nice words. of course you're all aware that henry isn't a real boy, right? he's made up.
you all knew that, right?

oh oh.
posted by mikemonteiro at 11:09 PM on October 23, 2001

Henry's dad, Mike, blogged this thread (and look, he commented, too! Hey Mike!)... apparently he's not that happy about the term "baby blog".

Nor am I... I was quoting Matt.

Maybe "Wee Blog" would work better? "Third-Person Blog"? I dunno... but Mike is right. "Baby Blog" blows.
posted by silusGROK at 8:15 AM on October 24, 2001

adampsyche and dreama -- thank you for saying the things I forced myself not to post in response to Witold. You can always count on people at MetaFilter telling you why your life sucks and how you ought to live it their way.

"Wee blog" is even worse than "baby blog", if you ask me. "Parenting blog" might be a little less quaint. Not everything needs a snappy jargony buzzword, anyway.
posted by briank at 8:37 AM on October 24, 2001

I've got a radical idea that might catch on...what about calling them "web sites" ???
posted by kilroy at 8:41 AM on October 24, 2001

Kilroy... how about this, everytime you reference a bread-and-filling concoction, be sure to call it a "sandwich". And when you're at the deli... refuse to order anything but a "sandwich", cuz, you know, specificity is so over-rated.

Attitude aside, a term for a specific brand of web content is helpful when you want to talk about the genre in something other than long, convoluted sentances.
posted by silusGROK at 9:03 AM on October 24, 2001

so cute! (but aren't all babies so? I have yet to see an ugly baby)

For you, maybe. Personally, infant humans give me a severe case of the creeps. Always have, always will. (No, I don't plan on having or raising kids!)
posted by zeb vance at 9:06 AM on October 24, 2001

my lord, we're arguing about proper labeling of kid's sites.
posted by mikemonteiro at 10:31 AM on October 24, 2001

No we're not!
posted by Kafkaesque at 10:50 AM on October 24, 2001

yes you are!
posted by mikemonteiro at 12:30 PM on October 24, 2001

Ah, and so MetaFilter finally boils down to its very essence:

No we're not!

yes you are!

Kafka, I believe it's your turn...
posted by briank at 1:28 PM on October 24, 2001

Thank you all for attending Mike and I's Argument Theatre. Further arguments will be scheduled in the forseeable future.
posted by Kafkaesque at 1:59 PM on October 24, 2001

(McBlog)
posted by kilroy at 7:09 AM on October 25, 2001

i write about my kids on my site, not exclusively, but considering they are the most important thing in my life it would be leaving most of my experience out to only write "i read this on the internet today. this too. oh, and this" to fit into the 'blog' perimeter. those of you elevated in your own esteem to qualify your opinion on the content of personal pages are presumtuous to assume you are considered any part of the target audience.
posted by jyoung at 7:25 AM on October 25, 2001

My husband and I put together a fun little site for our son as a way to announce his arrival into the world to friends and relatives scattered across the globe. We don't put every little detail about his life there, but we put what we want to share. For the minutia-hungry grandparents, we have a special area of our site that only they can access.

On the Web, as in the real world, everyone has their own way of dealing with disclosure of personal details. No one way is right for everybody...you reveal what jives with your comfort level. Sure, there are bad people online (publishers as well as observers) just like there are bad people in the world. I don't want to be afraid, or have my son be afraid, just because they are there.
posted by webchick at 8:01 AM on October 25, 2001

(...and just to balance my above opinion, I meant to point out that there are a helluva lot of good people, too. I look for the white helicopters :-)
posted by webchick at 8:14 AM on October 25, 2001

Most baby diaries are krep. My favorite is The Bleat at Lileks.com. Lots of ruminations on all sorts of things by a great writer-slash-Mister Mom, with little developmental updates on his baby girl.
posted by basilwhite at 9:45 AM on October 25, 2001