Ana’s got David right now, so I’ll take this time to get some things down that have been bouncing around my head lately.
Blogging all of this has been a blast. Initially I was going to just use the blog as a tool to keep a small handful of people we knew informed of the day’s progress so they could continue to spread the word for us. Wow, did that explode – relatively speaking. When it was all said and done, I was hearing about lots of people being glued to the blog anxious for updates. We surely didn’t expect Ana’s grandmother to be getting the news from the website!
But that’s exactly what happened (indirectly, but still), and I find that really interesting. I’ve never personally known anyone to do it like this, particularly not in either of our families. I figured I would get a few You’re going to do what?s from relatives (my side and hers), and then they’d just discount it as being some useless nerdy idea. While they may have been thinking it, I havent heard it.
As the day started I was really liking the idea of just posting as near-continuous updates as possible to keep everyone informed. I did get a few looks and questions from the nurses, but after answering them they thought it was pretty cool. So as you saw, there were quite a few followers out there. That was really neat to see as we were sitting around here waiting for the delivery. At the end of the day, after all those posts, we even heard that one of Ana’s Aunts (in New Berlin) got the news when her daughter called her. Her daughter had been reading the blog – from England!
Hopefully those that thought it was a strange idea (and you know who you are) don’t think it (or me) is quite so weird anymore!
This then brings me to some of the other nerdiness that has been going on. In this room I have a laptop, a camcorder, a voice recorder, and a digital still camera. That’s a lot of crap taking up space in the corner here. Lots of cables too… I’ve gotten a few interesting looks from the nurses, while family has come to accept this from me even if this case is quite extreme.
Anyway, I’ve got this pretty deep desire to show them that these aren’t just toys – that there can be some really good stuff come from all of the equipment. But I don’t want to be in-your-face about it. I just want to let any created content speak for itself. I’ve got fantastic video footage, still images, and even voice recordings (which some of you have already listened to). Now when I get some time I plan on putting it all together in a way that should just astound someone who had a child as little as 20 years ago. Seriously, would you like to have high quality video of the day you were born? Or be able to listen to the conversations that went that day? It’s 2007 and the tools we have available to us can open so many doors to things that just weren’t feasible for an average joe living in Central Illinois a couple decades ago, and in some weird way I feel obligated to demonstrate that. Sooo, that’ll be a fun little project 🙂
Back to the pile of electronics. That’s a lot of stuff to try and coordinate and use for just one person – a person that’s got real responsibilities for the day. So I’ve been in a constant mental battle for selecting which medium to use for certain situations. Should I go for still photo or video? Maybe just audio? But I need my hands free for things like..oh, I don’t know, holding the baby! It has been interesting and not something I really thought about until I needed to make a spit second decision on what device to take where. Now that I’m familiar with how things run during a birth, maybe I can make a plan for next time… 😉
The Johnson Blog 