Month: August 2009

Random

Grrr!

Post author By Jordan
Post date 8:51 pm
11 Comments on Grrr!

I’m really upset, so I’m doing what I do best when upset: blog.

neighborhood-007 On Thursday I got home from a trip to the library to find a yellow placard on our door. It was a warning from the police—we were in violation of the city code because our lawn was too long. (That’s our house in the photo, minutes after I got home to find the warning.) The police officer wrote that we should call him. I gave Ryan his name and number, and Ryan left a message on his voice mail.

We assumed that someone had called the police on another neighbor, one who had let their entire lawn die, and the officer had just checked the whole neighborhood while he was there—until the police officer returned my husband’s call. The officer confirmed that one of our neighbors had, in fact, called the police. On us and at least three other houses on the street (at least two of which are rental properties that have gotten new renters in the last couple weeks). And (in the interest of ensuring domestic tranquility, obviously) this person had written the mayor and the city council to report us and other neighbors. And they said that we had neglected our lawn for the last three years.

We don’t actually know which neighbor it was that did this, but we can only assume it’s not someone we know well. Also note: last month (that’s July, in case you’re reading this tomorrow), we did let our lawn go for a while, while we had 26 people at a family reunion based at our house. But obviously, that’s not the case now.

I am furious.

I’m pretty sure we can find out who did this—but should we? Should we do anything to defend our good name in our community? Should we say anything to these neighbors?

Fulfillment

Do moms deserve others’ respect?

Post author By Jordan
Post date 2:34 pm
6 Comments on Do moms deserve others’ respect?

Earlier this month, I posted an excerpt of a column by Mary Ann Miller. Though it was written decades ago, it still rings true, especially when she said, “It’s true that modern ideology still advocates free choice, but somehow the choice of full-time homemaker doesn’t garner the same respect and interest as choosing to be an astronaut.”

One commenter took issue with this statement:

And what sort of respect and admiration do you expect to get when the ones to benefit from the choice you made are your immediate family, as compared to someone whose choices benefit many hundreds of people? In other words, if your choice is to be a full-time mother, you can expect to receive the respect and admiration of your family because they are the ones who benefit, but why would you expect to receive any acknowledgement from other people who gain nothing from your choice? If your choice is to be an astronaut, you can expect to receive the respect and admiration of everyone whose life your work touches.

I responded in the comments there, but the more I think about this, the more this type of thinking bothers me. Let’s set aside how very ego-centric it is to only respect those who do something to directly benefit your life. Let’s look at the standard here—and I’m not trying to pick on this commentator, but using this comment to illustrate a pervasive, destructive thought pattern that undermines mothers.

Here’s our logic:

Astronauts can expect to receive the respect and admiration of everyone whose life their work touches.
Mothers can expect to receive the respect and admiration of only their children and husbands.

Seeing it yet?

In this line of thinking, a mother can only receive respect from someone who she works with directly, her immediate family. An astronaut, on the other hand, can “expect” to receive admiration from “many hundreds of people,” who benefit from her work (and here’s a niggling point: this argument says astronauts should get respect for everything anyone in their profession has contributed to society—but not so for mothers).

So what, exactly might that benefit be? Can you name one thing an astronaut has done to make your life better?

Now name one thing your mother did to make your life better.

Now name one thing her mother did to make your life better. A friend’s mother. Your child’s friend’s mother. Another mom in your neighborhood.

So why is it that a mother can only receive respect from the people she serves directly, but an astronaut can receive respect for all of her colleagues’ collective contributions to society? Why can’t we take mothers as a force, too?

Mothers do not only benefit their own families. Having a mother at home can benefit the neighborhood—mothers can touch the lives of their children’s friends—mothers can influence generations. An astronaut doesn’t teach children to get along, to share, to read, to write, to sing, to love, to laugh, to live. We influence our children, and through them, all they come in contact with for the rest of their lives. A mother is the most influential career any of us could have.

Or, as G.K. Chesterton put it in his “guest post” here:

How can it be a large career to tell other people’s children about the Rule of Three, and a small career to tell one’s own children about the Universe? How can it be broad to be the same thing to everyone, and narrow to be everything to someone?

So yes, I suppose I do agree that all mothers deserve the respect of those who have benefit from any one mother’s time, effort, talents, love. Has your life benefited from any nurturing woman?

Photo credits: astronaut—Brian Talbot; globe—Sanja Gjenero

Tags wohm, motherhood matters, career, respect, benefit, the work of motherhood, motherhood, society's view of motherhood, lies about motherhood

MetaBlogging

The New Ultimate Guide to Migrating from Blogger to WordPress

Post author By Jordan
Post date 1:49 pm
290 Comments on The New Ultimate Guide to Migrating from Blogger to WordPress

UPDATED 26 August 2009, with minor updates throughout, and a big change to step 3.

Want a full guide to setting up WordPress on BlueHost, an inexpensive, WordPress-recommended hosting company? Sign up for BlueHost with an affiliate link on this page, and email me (guide at mamablogga.com) for a free PDF guide on installation, set up, WordPress, add-ons and more!

I made the move from Blogger to self-hosted WordPress more than a year and a half ago. At the time, I wrote the original ultimate guide to migrating, but a few things have changed in the intervening months. So I present the fully updated, all new, ultimate guide to migrating from Blogger to WordPress!

Be sure to check out my article on deciding and preparing to switch your domain. Once you’re sure you’re ready, then here are 10 steps to transferring your blog safely, completely and . . . well, awesomely. This method preserves your links, your subscribers, your comments and your content, and makes the move search engine safe.

Get the goods: a domain, hosting, and the WordPress software

1. Get a domain, preferably “yourblog.com.” Don’t own a domain? I use either GoDaddy or Bluehost for domain registration. Their prices are okay. I recommend three things here:

Get private domain registration. No junk mail, no strangers getting your address from your whois info.
If available, get yourblog.com , yourblog.net and yourblog.org. Sometimes GoDaddy offers a deal where you can get free private registration when you register 3 domains. (Then redirect .org and .net to the .com using account management. Select 301 redirects.)
If you go with GoDaddy, search for “GoDaddy coupon.” Click on the first result and use whichever coupon will save you the most money (calculate out the % to see which one that is if you have to).

2. Get hosting. I recommend Bluehost.com; they came highly recommended and are a pretty good deal. Also, they’re one of WordPress’s recommended hosts and feature a very simple install for WordPress.

UPDATED 3. Install WordPress. With Bluehost, just login to your control panel, click on ~~Fantastico under Addons/Plugins~~ Simple Scripts under Software/Services, select WordPress from the list, and click the green Install Now button (under Install on an existing server—even if you’re importing your old blog, you’ll be using a new installation of WordPress). Fill in the forms and you’re done. If your host doesn’t have a similar install, you’ll have to install manually. It shouldn’t be too hard; WordPress gives you instructions (and they claim it takes five minutes!).

Prepare to transfer your feed: you don’t have to lose any subscribers

4. Blogger enables you to transfer your subscribers seamlessly as well. If you haven’t already, sign up for a FeedBurner account (if you need a walkthrough to FeedBurner, check it).

Then, login to Blogger and go to Settings > Site Feed. In the Post Feed Redirect URL box, enter your new FeedBurner address. This will help redirect your subscribers.

Prepare your new WordPress blog: with some fun stuff

5. Login to your WordPress (might take a little time for the installation to “take”). Select “Options” then “Permalinks.” Select “Custom” and type this line in the box:

/%year%/%monthnum%/%postname%.html

This is to match the post structure of your Blogger blog, to minimize the number of broken links and redirects. (It’s possible to change this structure, too, of course, but it’ll take additional steps.)

Wendy Piersall has a few more steps to setting up your initial WordPress installation and getting it off the ground. All good steps!

Move your posts and comments

6. This is the easy part! In WordPress, go to Manage (Tools in WP 2.7+) > Import. Select Blogger from the list and enter your login information. This should automatically transfer all your posts and comments for you. 😀

However, some of your links won’t work anymore because Blogger and WordPress convert post titles into URLs differently—Blogger leaves out stop words like “and” and “the.” You can fix this, too, with another handy plugin, Redirection. Upload it, activate it and you can use it to easily track and redirect individual broken links (for example, from “/this-best-post-ever.html” to “/and-this-is-the-best-post-ever.html”).

There are also some other plugins to do this automatically. To get these (or any) plugins, in WordPress go to Plugins>Add New. Search for the plugins by name or related terms. (Searching for “blogger permalinks” brings up some plugins that can help with this and some of the other technical stuff.)

Transfer your feed: keep all your subscribers

7. Login to FeedBurner, go into the feed and click on “Edit Feed Details.” Change your Original Feed to http://YOURNEWURL.com/feed/ .

8. In WordPress, you’ll probably want to use FeedBurner as well, and if so, there’s another plugin to integrate the two services perfectly, FeedSmith, owned by FeedBurner (which is owned by Google).

Change over the URL: the final steps to move your blog

9. Back in Blogger, select Settings for the blog you want to transfer. Select Publishing. Click the top link, “Custom domain.” Type in your new domain, www.yourblog.com. Save. Now your links will transfer automatically to your own domain (though sometimes Blogger will show visitors a page to make sure they’re not being taken to a different site accidentally), but you’ll need one more step to transfer your blog home page over.

10. Still in Blogger, go to Layout>Edit HTML. Place the following code anywhere after <head>:

<meta content='0; url=http://YOURNEWURL.com/' http-equiv='refresh'/>

This sends visitors to your blog homepage directly to your new URL, and, as Sebastian’s Pamphlets says, is a search-engine safe method of redirection.

Like the change in step 9, this can show visitors a warning page that they’re being taken to another domain. Some might think that it’s just as good to put a link to your new URL in your old blog and leave it up. However, it’s better for your search engine rankings to transfer it like this—if search engines see two copies of your content around the Internet, they may try to penalize one or both of your sites for “duplicate content.”

Be sure to test your main blog URL as well as some of your old post URLs to make sure everything is working, and of course, be subscribed to your feed to make sure that’s in order as well.

And you’re ready to blog on wit’ yo’ bad self.

Note: You might have to import your images to WordPress as well, but I haven’t.

Want a full guide to setting up WordPress on BlueHost, an inexpensive, WordPress-recommended hosting company? Sign up for BlueHost with an affiliate link on this page, and email me (guide at mamablogga.com ) for a free PDF guide on installation, set up, WordPress, add-ons and more! (Note: you must sign up with an affiliate link to receive the guide.)

Disclosure: the ~~GoDaddy and~~ Bluehost link is an affiliate link.

Tags wordpress, blogger, import, guides, migrate

Kids/Parenting

The infallible logic of a three-year-old

Post author By Jordan
Post date 1:24 pm
5 Comments on The infallible logic of a three-year-old

This afternoon, I was struggling with Rebecca, who has recently decided that she would prefer not to have her diaper changed ever again. Hayden watched the writhing and screaming (from both of us) and offered some pointers (he’s already learning how to be a dad! 😉 ).

“Becca do not want to be wiped.”

I agreed with his astute assessment.

“You not wipe her?”

“I have to wipe her,” I explained. “She’ll get hurt if I don’t.” Apparently we’ve had the diaper rash discussion enough times before that he accepted this without argument. But after a moment, he offered one more piece of advice to help us avoid future encounters of the #2 kind:

“Becca, stop pooping.”

What incredibly logical arguments did/do your toddlers or preschoolers make?

Tags rebecca, hayden, potty training, logic, preschooler, diaper, Pictures, baby, toddler

Kids/Parenting

Why #2 is easier

Post author By Jordan
Post date 8:27 pm
6 Comments on Why #2 is easier

With Hayden, we had two people giving examples—me and Ryan. (And, let’s face it, most of the time it was me. That whole earning-money thing. Whatever.)

With Rebecca, she has two people with her pretty much all the time to model behaviors. She’s picking up signing probably about the same as Hayden did, and of course some things she hasn’t learned yet that he knew at this age—but some things she’s practically a prodigy at already.

Like this one:

She also does this whenever she sees me with my arms folded, and randomly throughout the day. I love finding her sitting on the floor, her arms folded and her head deeply bowed. She’s also done this while we were eating lunch or even out to eat, as if to remind us that we forgot to say our prayers.

I know there will be an equal number of disadvantages for her, of course—I just won’t have the same amount time I devoted to Hayden to give my singular attention to her—but I’m pretty proud of this one!

How were your later children easier than your first? What things did you notice them picking up on faster?

Tags Video, prayer, praying, rebecca, the second child