Finding focus – learning to be a blogging mummy

First of all I have to apologise to anyone who logged on to my blog yesterday to be faced with a gruesome image of John Redwood staring at them for all the world as if he were some matinee idol. I tried to take the picture off but got all caught up with formatting and themes and stuff so in the end left it there. At least as I write this he is disappearing off the front page to be replaced with….what?

I love the phenomena that is mummyblogging. OK, so I find out more about how to cope with my kids as they were 10 years ago than as they are now (typical teens I suspect) but how I wish all that support had been there for me, and how wonderful it would have been to have something to be creative with in those few snatched moments when one or both were asleep/quietly sticking raisins up their nose.  I particularly love www.slummysinglemummy.wordpress.com where Jo Middleton, facing the stress of life as a single mum, makes us all feel better about not doing the washing up, or feeding children according to the back of a cereal packet rather than the latest toddler healthy cookbook. I am still learning the ropes of blogging, and have not yet found a focus. I really want to blog about life with my kids, and will do, but as they are always logging on to facebook or twitter I feel I cannot be as entirely candid as I might want to be..

James and Evie - whatever they call me I will always be their mummy...

I also thought perhaps I could write about still being the daughter of an aged mummy as after all ‘I was her first little baby’ as she often reminds me. She is a fab Mum, but my only response to that statement is ‘why didn’t you learn your lesson’?  She comes out with some great copy though. Only recently it was ‘why bother dieting dear? You are a middle aged woman with a family’. Or when teased about the possibility of her finding another man (at 81) ‘I haven’t seen it for more than 20 years, so I am certainly not going to show it to anyone else at my age’. Or ‘I didn’t know about gay people until I met your dad’. She can give any of your 4 year olds a run for their money when it comes to a good quote.

The original mummy, with her first and second little babies

Anyway, back to the point. Which is where I have the problem. Should I try and narrow the focus of my blog or use it as an opportunity to express how I feel about burning issues of the day? (Its OK – no more pictures of John Redwood I promise). Should I spend lots of time making sure my page expresses my personality or just get writing? How do I make sure I am saying stuff other people find relevent and interesting? Answers on the back of whatever passes for a postcard in cyberspace please!