It's been 2 months of Arlo.
I've been busy getting to know who he is and how he fits into our life. Spending our days on family adventures and drinking lots of coffee.
Generally Arlo swings from the world's most chilled out snoozy baby to the loudest thrill seeker, trying to stand up and walk at 4 weeks old. Sometimes I call him a chimpanzee - just as cheeky and clings onto us 24/7 or enjoys swinging about in his special swing chair. He has started smiling now and it fills us with joy every bloody time he does it. He gets bored easily so he really enjoys our days out, staring up at the sky with his big moonlight blue eyes or taking a long relaxed nap. He just fits into our lives perfectly.
Between the mountains of nappies and buckets of milk you can find Michael and I trying to divide our time and attention between Arlo - obviously, the pets - making sure they're not totally neglected, decorating our new house, gardening, visiting family and friends, and planning our next big trip abroad. Now, I'd like to get my maternity leave aspirations into play. As much as I love motherhood, I'm not very mumsy and I need to start doing things for myself - to keep being myself.
I'd like to get back into running again, finally get my drivers license and come back to blogging regularly. Dare I say it I'm tempted to dabble in some vlogging. Shock. In an age where success and social lives are measured by followers and subscribers, it's evident the world is full of stalkers obsessed with each other's lifestyles. I've grown to be obsessed with our own. Forgive my arrogance, I find myself wondering if anyone else could be too?
The thing is, whilst I was pregnant Michael and I put a 'social media ban' on photos of Arlo. So recently on the subject of vlogs, we've had a few discussions about that thin line and common debate between the social media ban vs blogging/vlogging vs 'sharenting'.
M and I still have our firm boundaries. What puts us off sharing more of Arlo and our personal life is the deep dark web, full of dodgy people and the ever lasting memory that the internet holds. We'd also like Arlo to have the choice of what is shared of him online, as we all know - once it's published, it's out there forever.
I've been blogging for 7 years, I've had Facebook for 10 years and I regularly use Instagram on a public setting. Snapshots of my life are online already, I may not be famous but my online footprint has been cemented into the internet. Would we want Arlo within that? Would he want it?
I hold my hands up. I follow a lot of families who share videos, blog posts and pictures of their kids. I enjoy catching snippets of their lives, privileged to be let in and I feel inspired. Besides, there is basic internet safety that's easy to follow. Some people argue that sharing images of your children online is no different to sharing them with the public at all, whether that's in the supermarket or on your family vlog. So I'm beginning to think, are we just being over protective?
Whatever we decide to do in terms of blogging and vlogging we need to put Arlo first. Aside from the fear of oversharing, I'm super excited about it.