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So right now I have a nine and a half month old and a just turned 7 year old. I’ll come right out and say that I know my second baby is currently getting more online air time than my firstborn. I also know that some people (OK so like 2) have decided that this is something they want me to know about, like I’m oblivious or something. I am sure many more people may have made private judgements.
Here is my reasoning and my defence and then I do not want to speak about it anymore. I might get a little feisty, so hold onto your hats. If you think I’m talking about you, I might be.
Babies grow and develop at the speed of light.
The Little Miss is no different. She can experience a milestone a day. She’s my beloved little baby and I want to record those moments. These developments can happen more frequently and visibly than they might for a 7 year old. A seven year old whose baby/toddler life was documented in frightening detail too – only he didn’t have a sibling to share the limelight with for a very long time. Just head back deep enough through my blog/social media archives and you’ll see it all (I recommend 2011 to 2014 for optimum baby stalking). How would it be fair to not post about my second baby as much as I did about my first, just so some self appointed social media police can feel good about themselves that I supposedly love my babies equally, measured by their own stupid yardstick since 2018?? Don’t people always joke about how their poor second child didn’t get the same attention? Well, I’ve been blessed with a situation in which I can even up the scales from both perspectives all the time in different ways.
What is posted on social media is only what I choose to share with my friends and family on my personal accounts and what I deem appropriate to post on my public accounts.
What you don’t see are reams of private moments in my camera rolls and personal family albums that include the Little Mister (of course)! There are moments that I know he would be mortified about the whole world seeing (some of which will absolutely be saved for his 18th or 21st birthdays). Now that he’s at school, he has little peers who can also access things online. Maybe not unsupervised for a while yet, but who knows what little shit might look him up, given half a chance (even a few years from now)? What would he want them to see/not see/know/not know? Also, on the school age topic, he is often in his school uniform. I don’t like to flash around which school he goes to in a public forum. I am careful about that for a few commonsense reasons. The Little Miss is a baby and will be a toddler, who does typical baby and toddler things. Cute stuff. Funny stuff. The usual developmental stuff. It doesn’t feel like such a violation of her privacy to post a bit about what she gets up to (although I don’t post her whole face publicly). Just like I did for her brother.
By default, I spend more time with the Little Miss.
Incidentally, I am going to find more opportunities to capture her life right now. While a larger age gap (about 6 years) seemed painful and unthinkable once upon a time, now it feels like a blessing. I get to bond with her and give her almost the same amount of one on one time her brother received as a tiny tot too. Making me feel guilty about that is a mean thing to do. You probably know what we’ve been through.
If you actually scroll back through the photos on my personal FB and Instagram profiles, you’ll actually see that despite having a new, shiny baby, my son has actually had a pretty decent look in! I think that anyone who knows us in real life who comments on his absence might need to bother to stalk me properly.
Entire families are not together 24/7 and it’s fucking weird when you ask where the other people are all the time on somebody’s social media. Like a few years ago, somebody went out of their way to comment (in person) that there were no pictures of my husband on my Facebook profile. Like it was a criticism of me. Um. No. He didn’t want to have photos of himself posted (he was actually a leeetle precious about it back then despite my protests) and he worked a lot. We had also gone through a bit of a rough patch when the Little Mister was small and it was nobody’s fucking business. Also, again, I was with my baby ALL the time. Of course it was going to represent him and I the most. Sigh. It’s kind of like when you turn up at a social event and somebody goes, “Where’s your husband?” and you’re like, well obviously there’s a good reason he couldn’t make it. WTF are you implying? That happened a lot to me before kids when he worked FIFO. I mean DUH. People knew and they still asked me, as if I had stashed his body somewhere. I think it’s strange to ask me where my daughter is every time I post a pic of my son and to ask me where my son is every time I post a pic of my daughter. In summary, people are weird. Stop being so weird. You only get to ask these questions if it’s literally getting suspicious and you think later on somebody might make a true crime podcast about it.
If I sound defensive, it’s admittedly because I am. Because I love my kids equally and I have always tried to make sure the Little Mister knows he is my OG and he’s loved just as much as his little sister. It’s something that is very important to me. Having someone question that makes me feel like shit and nobody has the right to make me feel like that. I am only answerable to my children on this issue and that’s what’s important.
I think in this age of social media (ha – that makes me feel old), we forget that some things belong offline. We forget that our online representation is not the full story (unless you’re a big over-sharer – you do you). We think that what we are seeing is everything in a person’s life, when often it is not. We also think that an offhand comment we make online because we’re just in the mood to shit stir will be forgotten about five minutes later – it isn’t always. Please. Think before you type. Or at least stalk somebody properly first. Seriously.
Also, this blog was always meant to be about me (haha how egotistical) and my journey through motherhood and about my identity as a person. My kids are very a very vital part of who I am and want to be. They are so many amazing things and they teach me so much, but they were never the intended sole focus of it all. Sometimes I even suck as a “mummy blogger” because of that. My point is that I am doing this my way and what I share of my children is completely up to me and my husband (and them as time goes on). They are not the whole story that I try to tell about my life and inner workings.
Has anyone else ever had a similar situation or felt weird about posting about their kids equally/not equally?
