Revisiting the Fort

I recently came across a link to my old archive, which I thought was completely lost.  I'm feeling quite nostalgic for my kids when they were little after reading those old posts.  I do not miss the stress that came with my husband's deployments, but that has been interesting to remember as well.

For those who don't know, I started blogging at Babble.com back in 2009 with a personal blog called Holding Down the Fort.  Babble was a new kind of parenting site when it started a few years earlier, and my dad had sent me an article about it.  After reading that article I contacted them about writing an essay based on my experience as a parent whose husband was deployed.  My piece, called The Home Front, was rated their most inspiring in their first year online.  I did a followup piece when my husband came back from Iraq called Return to the Home Front, which got picked up in various places.

It was a good experience getting paid for my writing and interesting getting feedback from people in so many places.  Babble was quirky and surprising at the time, and the editors I was in contact with originally were great.

When my husband was called up for a second tour in Iraq I approached Babble about blogging my experience during that deployment.  The first deployment was incredibly isolating, and I thought blogging the second time around might help.  It did.  I enjoy the discipline of regular writing, and the personal nature of blogging and direct contact with readers is satisfying.  I loved my blog at Babble, and I'm still grateful for many of the contacts I've made through that site.

Although it started out fine, working with Babble was frustrating.  I was one of about a half a dozen personal bloggers at first.  The bigger names (such as Rebecca Wolf with her spinoff blog called Straight from the Bottle, and Katie Granju) didn't really involve themselves with our little community on the site, but others I felt close to, the way you do when you regularly follow a parenting blog and reach out through email.  Jane Roper I still actively follow on her new blog, and others like Dawn Meehan and Oz Spies are still at Babble in some capacity.  One of the best blogs I've ever read was Divorced with Kids, which was a spinoff of Irretrievably Broken, whose anonymous author is now one of my most cherished friends.  Our little corner of personal bloggers at Babble was a special place for a while.

Then the Voices started.  In preparation for the Disney buyout, Babble decided to create a wall of big name bloggers who were supposed to attract big numbers coming over from their already popular blogs.

Source Material

We first instituted Friday Night Movie Night in our home when Ian was deployed the second time.  I found it easier to keep the kids (and myself) distracted from his absence if we always had short term goals to look forward to.  Having Movie Night never be more than a week away helped more than you can imagine.

The challenge has always been finding movies for all of us to enjoy; nothing too scary or complicated for the youngest and nothing that will annoy or bore the adults to death.  So far we've done pretty well (and I will list suggestions for family movies at the end of this post if anyone's interested).

In the past year or so, we've decided to focus on what Ian and I term "Source Material."  Our kids are old enough that they've been exposed to a ton of media, and they constantly take in references to older movies and shows without realizing it.  We find ourselves regularly trying to explain certain jokes that go right over their heads during programs like Futurama, the Simpsons, and Phineas and Ferb.  (Thank goodness for YouTube.  I have paused episodes of Phineas and Ferb just to show the kids the opening themes to The Love Boat and Gilligan's Island--among other things--so they would appreciate the spoofs.)

But explaining things only goes so far.  Why not go right to the source and let them see for themselves?