BlogHer ’09
This conference spawned many a blog post, both before and after the event, as well as its own spin-off for those of us who couldn’t get there — BlogHer@Home.  From the anticipation of what to wear to meet Tim Gunn to the Nikon party drama to swag whore behaviour to the aftermath of attendees recapping their experiences, talk of BlogHer ’09 dominated the summer.

Maytag-gate
When Dooce’s Maytag washing machine crapped out, everyone heard about it.  Some people were pissed that she was “bullying” the company, others thought it was all overblown melodrama, and some were completely on her side.  In the end, though, a women’s shelter ended up getting some new appliances, and I think we can all agree that’s awesome.

Maddie (& Binky)
Madeline Spohr’s passing devastated the parenting blogosphere.  I don’t know of a single mother who heard this story and didn’t feel instant compassion for Heather and Mike and deep, abiding sorrow — and love — for Madeline.  The founding of Friends of Maddie, a charity in her memory that provides support to families with babies in the NICU, has provided a way for everyone to continue showing their love for this beautiful little girl who left us too soon. Heather’s pregnancy with Maddie’s little sister, dubbed Binky, has been avidly followed and cheered on, and we can’t wait to read about her in 2010.

Nic & the TSA
In October, blogger Nic White tweeted and blogged frantically about how TSA agents in Atlanta took her son out of her sight for ten minutes.  Parents were up in arms – how could such a thing happen?  It was terrifying!  An abuse of power! Err… not so much.  The next day, the TSA began sending out links on Twitter to a video that almost completely contradicted Nic’s story.  Some of us were angry at and hurt by Nic’s (apparent) lies; some supported her unwaveringly; some were concerned about how this reflected on bloggers as a whole.  Altogether, though, it was a really messy happening that strained, and in some cases broke, friendships.

Stellan
In July, Twibbons began appearing on people’s avatars for a little boy named Stellan.  He was having heart troubles and was in the hospital in critical condition.  We worried for him, we hoped for him, we prayed for him, and he emerged from his troubles victoriously.  Then, in November, he had a successful emergency procedure performed on his heart that has, hopefully, cured his ills and left him a healthy, strong little boy.

Anissa
In mid-November, Anissa Mayhew suffered a stroke.  The amount of support that poured out for her was (and remains) incredible.  130 bloggers showed their love for her in an incredibly touching video and there have been countless blog posts and tweets praying for her, as well as an online auction to raise funds for her medical expenses.  Her recovery has been incredible thus far and we’re all looking forward to hearing from her in the new year.

Aiming Low
Related to Anissa, she founded Aiming Low, a website with an all-star roster of female bloggers dedicated to being “perfectly not-perfect exactly as you are“.

Nestle Boycott
Spurred by the list of attendees of the Nestle Family conference, Annie of PhD in Parenting (whose influence makes her practically a top story in and of herself) spearheaded a movement to raise awareness of a Nestle boycott that has existed since the 70s in response to their formula marketing practices.  At Halloween, the #boonestle hashtag was established to help tweeps show their support for and/or participation in the boycott.

Military Mom
In December, Shellie Ross experienced the loss of her two year old son by drowning, a tragic event bookended by tweets.  News outlets and other bloggers called her monitoring of her son into question, but some were quick to show their support for her through her grief.

Honourable mentions:
The first Type-A Mom Conference
Twitter parties (in particular #GNO)
Books – The Mominatrix’s Guide to Sex, Kirtsy Takes a Bow, The Pioneer Woman Cooks

What did I miss?  What were some stories of 2009 that you found to be particularly powerful?

When I woke up the next morning to a tweet from TSABlogTeam pointing me towards their blog post in response to Nic (I assume they messaged me because I RT’d Nic’s post because “everyone else is doing it” — yes, I gave in to peer pressure), I had to go check it out.  I didn’t watch the entire video.  I didn’t need to.  I just read the words, the comments left by visitors, and the tweets just beginning to buzz among my friends: Nic’s story didn’t ring true.

I watched the ranting on Twitter: “Nic’s in hiding!  Why isn’t she responding to the TSA?”  Nic had posted that she was going on a cross-country flight, and I tried to calm one person by telling her this, but to no avail.  The witch hunt had begun.  The judgments were being handed out, and there was no way to stop them.

This is when I started to feel angry at Nic.  I believed her.  I have been talking with her off-and-on since July; I’d call her a casual friend of mine.  Certainly, she owes me nothing, but I have seen her be so supportive, kind, and friendly to people, to me, that I never expected deception from her.  I could have accepted if she added some melodrama and exaggeration to her tale for the sake of a “better” story.

Then she posted her apology, and I got angrier.  All I got out of it was that she accused the TSA of doctoring the video footage.

REALLY, Nic?  REALLY? Please.  Give your readers, and yourself, more credit than that.  If you lied, own up to it.  Yeah, you fucked up — on a pretty grand scale, at that — but you know what?  A lot of us were rooting for you.  As messed up as it might sound in retrospect, we wanted you to have been wronged.  We wanted your story to be true, so much so that we never questioned it.  So much so that when the TSA came out with their side, we felt personally wronged, and betrayed.  We felt like you used our goodwill towards you as cheap currency … for what?  I don’t believe you wrote that passionate post and asked us to RT it for pageviews.  So what did we help you achieve? And why did you need to use us to achieve it?

Those questions are, I think, at the root of my anger towards her.  I trusted Nic, and now that trust has been broken.

If Nic messaged me tomorrow asking for love and support, I’d offer her whatever I could.  My anger doesn’t preclude me from worrying about her and her family, nor does it allow me to shrug off the insults and vitriol being spewed at her.

Above all else, though, I’m left with one abiding concern:

What else has Nic lied to us about?

And thus far, I haven’t minded when the two collide.  My mother, sister, brother, and his girlfriend read here regularly, and my blog address is posted to my Facebook, so I assume that any of my friends and family there could arrive here.  It is their choice to come here and read, and if they discover something about me that they’d rather not… well, hopefully they won’t bring it up over Christmas dinner.

I won’t deny that there are people I hope will not come here.  This is not because I am frightened of them, but rather that I have chosen to remove them from my life and I would like it to stay that way.  However, I’m not willing to hide.

I feel like I am standing in the middle of a field.  There is a snake in the grass at my ankles, but it is just a snake; I am surrounded by breath-taking beauty, the sun shines on my face, and flowers bloom beneath my fingers.  Birdsong fills my ears, butterflies and bees dance nearby, and I am so blessed to be where I am.

The most unexpected and wonderful consequence of being so alive online, being so public, has been the men and women I’ve met.  There are those among you who I love like siblings.

I love every moment of blogging, every moment spent tweeting with you all, and every moment of reading about your lives.  Thank you for making my field so beautiful.  Thank you for being a part of my online family.

If you follow me on Twitter (and you should!) then you’ve heard me pimp out my new project, NetworkWithMoms, a few times.  But let me talk about it here so I can provide a bit more information than can be summed up in 140 character blurbs, and hopefully get a few of you excited, interested, and perhaps even willing to guest post.

I’m launching NetworkWithMoms because, during a consultation with Jon Morrow of Copyblogger, I started talking about how amazing Twitter is at building friendships.  All of you with children understand the sense of monotony and loneliness that can seize you unexpectedly when it seems like your entire life is consumed with taking care of a newborn; I genuinely feel that Twitter, Facebook, and blogs (all of which are forms of social media) not only make those feelings bearable, but can negate them altogether.

So many times I’ve seen strangers come together via social media behind a cause (Friends of Maddie), to support someone (Maria and her mother), and unfortunately, to attack each other (PR Blackout).  While these are not equally appealing, they teach an equally valuable lesson: we are all interconnected. I realized that there is so much to be shared with one another in the realm of social media, whether opinions, tips and tricks, or how tos.  Women use these networks to promote their business, find work, or make friends.  There’s more than a handful of communities aimed at moms out there: wouldn’t it be helpful to read reviews and find out which ones suit you best?

Each week I will feature a mom who has benefited personally or professionally from social networking as well funny tweets, submitted by you (email or tweet the link to @NetworkWithMoms)!  All ads on the site will be from mom-run businesses, so if you purchase from one of them, you know you’re not supporting some faceless corporation.  I welcome guest posts, so if you have a story, thoughts, or information to share, please feel free to submit it to tatiana @ networkwithmoms . com.

Whether you’re a Facebook beginner who can’t figure out how to set up your profile picture or a pro trying to squeeze as much productivity out of your free time as possible, I want NetworkWithMoms to suit your needs.  I want it to become the site you turn to when you want to know anything about being a mom using social media.

Enjoy, and remember to drop by the posts of other participants!

(I can hardly believe the year is halfway over… crazy.)

01. Me: The Highs and the Lows (or, accepting that it ain’t all roses)
02. Nicole @ Grudge Mom: A Lighter Side of the Recession: Having a Baby in 2009
03. Emma @ Baby Log: 12 Little Things I Want to Remember About My Baby
04. Mamie @ The Life I Now Live: I Can Wait
05. Inconvenient Body: L’art Pour L’art: It’s Child’s Play
06. My Field of Paper Flowers: Babies of 2009 Carnival
07. Rebecca @ A Little Bit of Momsense: An Ode to My Sweetie
08. Myg @ Wiser Mom: Babies of 2009 Born to a Baby of 1969
09. Jinxy @ Jinxyisms: Baby oh baby

In the spirit of celebration, I’m hosting a “Babies of 2009″ Carnival on this blog on July 1st.  All I want you to do is write a post about a frustrating or joyful experience in your life as a mother to a newborn, or as an expectant mother.  My hope is that I can help a few new moms connect with one another.   Although the carnival is focused on parents whose children were born (or will be born) in 2009, I will also have a category for babies born before 2009 — you are more than welcome to participate as well!

Please sign up with your post at the Babies of 2009 Carnival page on BlogCarnival.com.  If you are having problems with that, just come here on July 1st and leave a link to your post in the comments (or send me an email, or a tweet…)

We gathered at the (Don Mills) Evergreen Brickworks, which is an old factory site that’s being revamped into “international showcase for urban sustainability and green design“.  After finding parking (parking there suuuuucks), we head into the building.  “Building” might be kind of a strong word… it was more like a hangar, a big metal roof held up by big metal poles over some concrete, but charming nonetheless.  Vendors filled the area, most selling locally produced organic products.  The back of the building opened up to a small courtyard, with a pond and forests and hills and trails… and apparently, as a conversation later revealed, koi in the water.  Oh, and turtles.  I actually didn’t look at the water at all!

As we’re walking up to the courtyard, I see some bright, very light hair.  “That’s Catherine,” I say to Chris, “I think.”  But she has her hand up by her ear and I think she’s on a cell phone, so we walk right by one another without me saying anything.  Fortunately, Katie of Motherbumper recognizes me as we walk up.

After some finagling of the Starbucks coffee boxes (did you know they don’t have actual spouts? Just a big hole where you pour the coffee from?  And here we have kids running around?  Yeah, those coffee boxes were an accident waiting to happen, an accident that didn’t happen) we all settled down at a picnic table to talk.  Emma of Where there’s a Willer… was there, as well as Racheal McCaig the Energizer Mommy, Kelly the Don Mills Diva, Rebecca of Playground Confidential, and two others whose names and blogs I didn’t catch (so sorry, I fail at networking).

I loved meeting all of these women, and I loved seeing all the kids.  Seven month-old Little I sat in her stroller looking around, grabbing onto her toys and watching everything with her huge blue eyes, and I even got a smile out of her.  It was just amazing to sit there with my baby Maia, watching the older children racing around together, watching Jasper stomp around in that chunky, awkward, and totally endearing way that a child who has just learned how to walk has.  I mean, someday, Maia will be walking. On her own two feet.  Independent of us.  Someday beyond that, Maia will be running.  With her friends.  Caught up in childhood.  Fuck, I’m getting teary-eyed just thinking of it.

I honestly didn’t realize how much I needed to have a real-life conversation with moms (unrelated to me).  I love Twitter, I love blogging, and I love the online mom community, but to sit out in the fresh air together, voice our thoughts, and share smiles … I needed that.

We talked about BlogHer and how awesome it is.  I really hope I can get there next year.  It seems really reasonably priced, so, my fingers are crossed.  We talked about breastfeeding and how other women supporting you makes it infinitely easier, but the amount of misinformation out there about it can be discouraging.  I whipped out my boob to feed Maia and no one blinked then or when Rebecca whipped out her boob to nurse Little I.  We talked a bit about labour, delivery, and the hospital experience.  We giggled at the old man who stomped by wearing a camouflage handkerchief as a sarong (and maybe some shoes but I dunno) — hopefully Catherine’s picture of him pops up sometime.

Most of these women knew each other already.  I did feel a little intimidated — I mean, I’m new to this mommy thing, I’m not going to BlogHer 2009, and I live 40 minutes outside of the city, so going into Toronto requires some planning on my part.  By the time the gathering dispersed, though, I felt so comfortable and happy.  I had a great time and I really hope there are more Toronto mommy get-togethers that I hear about!

So, to anyone else that has set up their own domain — did you just jump into it head-first?  Did you learn HTML & other coding as you went along, or did you go into it with a newbie guide at your side?  Do you have a friend you call on for technical support, or do you do your best to figure things out first and then call on someone when it’s just too much to do alone?

Inquiring minds want to know!