A week and a half ago, I attended my second BlogHer conference. It was many things to many people. For me it was inspiring, thought-provoking, educational, interesting, fun, exhausting, exciting, frustrating, troublesome, inspiring, surprising, exhilarating, awesome, and (yes, I’ll say it for the third time) inspiring.

Unlike my first year of attending BlogHer, I made a point of pacing myself this year. I decided to only attend a few of the panels and some of the keynotes. I made plans to do things outside the hotel (like sight-seeing with my friend Heather from A Mama’s Blog). I made sure I had some downtime in my hotel room each day. I made sure I ate a lot of vegetables and fruits. I didn’t try to meet and network with as many people as I could, but instead decided to spend quality time with smaller groups. (Not that there’s anything wrong with networking, but my heart just wasn’t in it this year.) I feel like I’ve been living a slower, simpler life at home lately and wanted that kind of experience out of BlogHer too. I wanted to take it easy at BlogHer, have fun, and be inspired. I think I succeeded in doing all three.

The three panels I chose to attend (and it was tough deciding because there were many I would’ve liked to attend) were Writing Inspiration: Stoke Your Creativity, Radical Blogging Moms: Don’t Even Think About Not Taking These Bloggers Seriously, and The Mega “Mindful Monetization” Session. I took something away from all three of them, but the one I’ve been thinking about the most lately is the Writing panel.

You may have noticed that my post count has gone down significantly lately. No? You haven’t noticed? Aren’t you sweet. ;) As always, its not that I don’t have anything to write about, its that I’ve been lacking the motivation to just sit down and write. The writing panel gave me some ideas on how I might “stoke my creativity” and work on getting in the habit of writing – even for just 20-30 minutes – every day. (And ya know, I actually took notes with a pen and paper in that panel and now I can’t find my notebook at the moment or I’d mention more specifically some of the ideas shared. I think I’ll write another post down the road with those ideas.) Now that doesn’t mean I will crank out a blog post every day, but I am hoping that the practice of writing every day will encourage me to blog more frequently. The more I write, the easier it will be for me to write a post when I want to. At least in theory.

Anybody want to commit to writing 20-30 minutes a day with me? :) We can do this together.

I will write more on what I found so inspiring (there were a lot of things, mostly people) and what was troublesome and frustrating (not too terribly much, which is a good thing) in a later post.

Also later this week I will be blogging about drinking alcohol while pregnant and whether or not pregnant women should be served by restaurants and bars. It should be a good post and I expect a lively discussion to follow. ;)

Photo credit: Flickr – Adikos

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It’s Haiku Friday.
A first for me on my blog.
Thought it looked like fun.

And now for the real Haiku…

Girl Scout Cookies

Oh, Girl Scout Cookies.
Peanut butter, chocolate.
My favorite treat.

Morning, noon and night.
I could eat you ’round the clock.
And sometimes I do.

Oops. Running low now.
I must make the cookies last.
Rationing them out.

But wait! There are more!
Sweet treasure in the freezer.
Sigh. What a relief.

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I’m so flattered to have been chosen as February’s Mama Blogger of the Month over at Mile High Mamas. Feel free to check out my interview over there today. That Amber asked some hard good questions and I provided some long-winded thorough answers. ;) Seriously though, it was a lot of fun to ramble about my passions. Thank you for the honor, Mile High Mamas.

Also, there are some awesome bloggers out there who have bestowed bloggy awards upon me over the past couple of months. I haven’t forgotten your kindness and am working on my post for passing those awards on. Hope to have it up within the next week. Thank you. :)

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BlogHer has unveiled a new topic area: Body Image and is encouraging everyone to write a Letter to Our Body.

Hello dear body o’ mine,

It’s been a while since we talked so I thought I’d take this opportunity to chat with you for a bit.

First of all, thank you for sticking with me all of these years. You’ve done some amazing things over the past 32 years and put up with some crap from me and yet, despite that I don’t often acknowledge your greatness, you keep on keepin’ on.

You proved yourself awfully resilient from an early age when you endured three eye muscle surgeries (for strabismus) before you/I were even 2 years old. You rose to the challenge when, at age 6, I stepped on a piece of wood while in a lake, and was on crutches for a few weeks while you healed yourself. You stayed remarkably healthy and strong throughout my middle school years when a bag of Funyons and a candy bar was often considered a “cooler” lunch than a sandwich and apple. And you kept on truckin’ throughout high school when I got us up before school for 7 a.m. band/flag corps practice, then went to school, then had drill team practice after school, then did homework and often worked until 10 p.m. at K-mart. You are a machine for getting by on so little sleep and still functioning well enough to get good grades throughout high school.

Then there were the college years, where I was often an emotional wreck, ate crappy cafeteria food, pulled all-nighters cramming for exams, not to mention the experimentation with drinking and smoking (cigs, cloves and other). I know there wasn’t a huge amount of either of the two, regardless thank you for responding so well the majority of the time, and keeping me on the straight and narrow even though I have a serious family history of addiction. You don’t know how thankful I am for not falling victim to it.

After college I began to wise up a bit and understand that you deserved better. I started drinking water instead of soda and even went the vegetarian route a few times. However, I admit exercise was not then and is still not one of my biggest priorities. You deserve better from me in that regard.

When I got pregnant for the first time, I believed in you to help me through a natural childbirth. And while I did the best I could with the cards dealt me (HELLP syndrome), I ended up having to be hooked up to machines and on drugs (magnesium sulfate) that I never knew existed. Even though I was seriously sleep deprived and bed-ridden and drugged, you stayed strong for both me and my baby girl. Thank you from the bottom of my heart for that.

After Ava’s birth, you recovered from anemia and, as Ava grew older, I started to pay closer attention to the foods we ingested, both for her health and for yours. Instead of frozen dinners, I opted for more whole, organic foods. I think this helped you, my body, a great deal when I got pregnant with my second child.

Knowing that I wanted a home birth this time around, I was willing to do just about any and everything to keep you in the best shape possible so that I could to achieve that, which meant eating more protein throughout my pregnancy, going for acupuncture, and drinking some nasty concoctions of Chinese herbs. All of it paid off when I went into labor on my own without any symptoms of HELLP.

You proved yourself to be a birthing warrior when you gave birth vaginally to a 9 1/2 lb. surprise footling breech baby boy in our bedroom at home. No drugs, no machines, just pure hormones, endorphins, love and determination. You were amazing. Again, thank you for doing exactly what you needed to do to have a healthy baby.

These past nearly four years of motherhood have caused some wear and tear on you, this I know. Sleep deprivation can be hard on a body, as can breastfeeding hunched over with poor posture. I will do my best to honor your cues as to when you need sleep and to be mindful of my posture. I know I need to take care of you to be able to take care of my family.

I hope to have a long run with you, dear body, and I pledge to continue to nourish you with good foods, save the occasional sweet treat. I gotta be honest, I think you do love your chocolate. ;) I pledge to exercise more. I can’t promise anything fancy, but I can do more frequent walks and at least that is something. I also will try to take some time to honor you on a regular basis and appreciate you for the wonderful life you give me.

You are an incredible thing, my body. You are strong, resilient, healthy and amazing, and I thank and love you.

Sincerely,

Amy
(Crunchy Domestic Goddess)

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I’m excited to announce that starting this week, I will be writing for BlogHer in the BlogHers Act: Maternal Health area.

While we were in Kansas over Christmas, I got an email from the wonderful women of BlogHer asking me if I’d be interested in joining them as a contributing editor writing on the topic of maternal health. As most of you know, pregnancy and birth, two big aspects of maternal health, are among my passions, so of course I said yes. I am thrilled for the opportunity to write about the things that I love (and I must admit the opportunity to be paid to write is rather appealing as well).

I found it rather ironic though that I came down with a cold just days later. So much for my own maternal health. ;)

While I believe I will be focusing on pregnancy and birth a great deal, I also plan to write about other areas of maternal health such as mental health, environmentalism, and nutrition.

Part of writing for BlogHer includes featuring other women bloggers who write about these topics on their own blogs as well, so don’t be surprised if you find your blog linked to over on BlogHer. :)

I’m honored to be a part of the BlogHer community. My first post there will be this Tuesday and now, if you will excuse me, I need to get to work. ;)

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