Old and Paranoid

When this blog was created, the reasons were two-fold. Primarily, it is an easy way for me to share pictures from recent photo shoots along with narrative information. With Brandon’s hectic travel schedule, it also allows him to catch a glimpse of the day to day stuff he so often has to miss. It quickly became a great way for our far flung friends to be able to check in with our family.

What did not occur to me, was so many people would be interested in our doldrums. In the few short months the blog has been up and running, it’s readership is far larger than I ever imagined it would be. This is great, and I’m thrilled that people, mom’s in particular, can relate to us!

However, I’m starting to feel a bit of uneasiness. I once heard Oprah Winfrey say if you have a gut feeling something might be wrong, it probably is.

I know most of our friends read the blog, and several of them have passed it along to their friends. This doesn’t worry me at all, and I think it’s incredibly sweet. I think I may have created this situation inadvertently by commenting on two other blogs and leaving my blog address. Those comments lead people to my blog and it snow balled from there.

Most of the people I’ve heard from are moms who also happen to love photography, and they seem like wonderful women. They’ve provided me with a peer group with whom I can exchange photography tips. I love this aspect of connecting with people I otherwise would never have met.

Lately though, I’ve been getting comments from people I a.) do not know, and b.) am unable to trace at all….no-email address, no webpage, no blog of their own, etc. The comments come to me before I publish them, and if I don’t know who they are, I don’t publish the comment. A couple of recent comments from unknown origins have mentioned how cute our kids are. Normally, flattery will get you everywhere with me, but not when it comes to strangers and our children. While I’m fairly certain these are other moms who relate to my writing and know cute kids when they see them :), I’ve watched too much Dateline to know there are wackadoos out there.

This is a long winded way to tell you that if you enjoy reading about my adventures as a mom, and want to see recent pictures; I need you to do me a favor. Please either leave a comment with your e-mail address or e-mail me and let me know you’d like to continue receiving updates from the nut house.

I’m going to make the blog invitation only and to do that, Blogger will send an invitation to those who’ve provided me with their e-mail addresses. Blogger may ask you to create an account, and if it does it’s really a painless, one time process. They do not share your e-mail address, so there isn’t much risk of spam clogging your inbox.

I hope it doesn’t make the process too cumbersome, but I’m going with Oprah on this one. I’m going to follow my gut instinct. I will not, however, be following her advice to vote for Obama under any circumstance. (I may have just eliminated half my readership with that statement alone. :) )

I will leave the blog as is until Monday evening; after that time it will be invitation only. So, if you wnat to keep reading, please let me know soon!