So Glad They Told Me - Book Release Day!

I've always tried to be real about both the great and the really hard parts of motherhood on this blog and on my Facebook page (shameless plug, follow it if you don't already. That's where I share the really juicy stuff. Also ridiculous pictures of myself for some reason.) I try to tell the truth about parenthood, to laugh (and make you guys laugh, too) and to cry, and to be honest about it all.

Last year, an awesome blogger named Stephanie Sprenger launched a campaign called So Glad They Told Me and asked other moms to share honest, real and helpful advice that other people had given them about motherhood (or the advice they wish they'd gotten.) And since I try to be real to the point of embarrassing myself, I shared this picture of myself sitting on an embarrassing pile of laundry along with some helpful advice that my dad gave me about housework when you've got an infant.

Spoiler alert: I no longer have an infant, and my laundry situation is still this embarrassing. 

The campaign went viral, and the above photo of me, my baby and my ridiculous pile of laundry appeared on television and on The Huffington Post. I'm so proud.

Then a while later on Facebook, Stephanie posted a call for submissions for a book, also to be called So Glad They Told Me. Guys, I wanted to be in the book so badly! I ended up submitting two essays on the very last day they were accepting submissions, and then I waited. And waited some more, because it turns out that I was wrong about it being the last day to submit. So then I waited some more.

And then I got an email telling me that ONE OF MY ESSAYS HAD BEEN ACCEPTED FOR INCLUSION IN THE BOOK!!! AAAHHHH!! The essay they accepted was about my parents - two amazing people who I'm proud to know - and about the only time I can ever remember my mom refusing to talk to me.

And today, that book is available for sale!! With my essay in it!! And my name!!! And a little bio about me that was somehow harder for me to write than the essay itself!!!

Honestly, since I just got my copy of the book three days ago, I haven't even had a chance to finish reading all of the other essays in the book yet (shocking, I know, with two young kids at home,) but I've loved the ones I've read! The book is a refreshing and honest look at parenting - both the amazing parts and somewhat less than amazing part. And it HAS MY NAME IN IT!!!

If you want to buy So Glad They Told Me: Women Get Real About Motherhood, you can do so here!! (Full disclosure, if you buy it through that link, it will cost the same for you, but I'll get a small percentage of the sale. Like literally a few cents. But if you don't want me to get a few cents, you can just type the name of the book into Amazon and buy it that way.)

So, to summarize, I JUST GOT PUBLISHED IN A REAL LIVE BOOK!!!! And so did some other amazing women!! And you can read it if you want to.

I was promised more naps | Promote Your Page Too

The one in which I GOT PUBLISHED ON THE HUFFINGTON POST!!!!!! (Part 2)

If you haven't yet read part 1, you should read it here.

As I was waiting to see if my post was actually going to be published on HuffPost, (and by "waiting," I obviously mean "alternating between staring obsessively at my phone and staring obsessively at my laptop to see if I'd gotten an email saying that it had been posted") I happened to notice an article from a local news station about a pregnant meteorologist who had been getting nasty comments and letters about her appearance from viewers. And I thought, "well that's just mean! Why do people feel like it's... AUGH! A NEW EMAIL!! MY POST MUST BE UP!! Oh, shoot, nevermind... appropriate to make rude comments about pregnant women's bodies??"

When I got my HuffPost Blogger log in information, the guidelines said "Post if and when you want; you are the boss," so I wrote a post about how it would be nice if people would maybe stop criticizing the bodies of pregnant women who they don't even know, and I uploaded that one to HuffPost, too. (Which meant that then I was freaking out about whether two posts would be published, instead of just one. So that was maybe not so bright.)

Then finally, I got the email. My first post was live!! (You can read it here. It's pretty much identical to how I submitted it to them, except for that they edited out the phrase "bodily fluids." Which was probably a smart move, but which also cracked me up for some reason.) I literally jumped up and down screaming in my kitchen, which my three-year-old thought was awesome, so he kept asking me to do it again. (He and I spent a good fifteen minutes jumping up and down and screaming; me because I was excited to be on HuffPost, him because he likes screaming.) And then I posted it on Facebook, and screamed some more. It got 18 comments (17 of which were from people I knew) and was visible towards the bottom of the main HuffPost Parents page, so I was pretty pleased.

Then two days later, they published the piece I wrote about critiquing pregnant women's bodies. And started promoting it at the bottom of their other pieces. And it got 30-something comments in like 30 minutes. And I FREAKED OUT. Then they posted it on the HuffPost Parents Facebook page. (It ultimately got over 4,500 likes.) And I freaked out some more! (Although, side note, I meant for that picture to be a stock photo of a pregnant woman's belly, not my face. But technology is hard.)

Then half an hour after they posted my post on their Facebook page, they posted a piece by Nigel Barker.

Source: HuffPost Parents Facebook Page

And I was like, OH MY GOSH, NIGEL BARKER AND I WRITE FOR THE HUFFINGTON POST TOGETHER!! (Except, disclaimer, Nigel Barker has no idea who I am. But Nigel, if you're reading this, and you want to collaborate on a piece on, say, the art of the diaper change, give me a call. Loved you on America's Next Top Model. I used to watch it while eating cheese dip from Sam's Club, so as you can see, our lives are equally glamorous.)

I've published three posts on HuffPost, and the excitement still hasn't gone away. Some of you have asked how much new traffic I've gotten for my blog: so far, I've gotten 45 new likes for my blog's page and a spike in traffic each time I post (the biggest spike came after my pregnancy post.) I've also gotten one whole mean Tweet! The guy told me I should've "learned to use logic and reasoning before becoming a writer," which really made no sense in context of any of my posts, but I was like, "Sweet! Some guy called me a writer!!" Plus now when people ask me my hobbies, I can be like, "Oh, you know, I write for The Huffington Post. No big deal." Then they'll be like "Oh, cool! How much do they pay you?" And I'll be like, "Um, nothing." And then they'll be like "Can I have some of your cheese dip?" And that's when I'll know I've arrived.

If you want to follow me on HuffPost to be notified any time I post something new there, go here. And if you're not already following me on Facebook, you should do it here. Sometimes I say funny things.

All the times I was never famous

Sometime in November, I was just hanging out, thinking normal mommy thoughts (like "Is it almost bedtime?") and saying normal mommy things (like "No, Lucas, don't put your shoes in the garbage.") when I got an alert on my phone that I had an email. It was from someone at a major news website that I guarantee you've heard of, unless you're my husband.

The email asked me if I wanted to participate in a live parenting panel discussion on their site. My internal reaction pretty much went like this: "Oh my gosh! I'm famous! Wait. Is this a scam? They probably sent this to the wrong person. Do they know my blog isn't hugely popular? What if they think I'm an expert in parenting and then they find out that I let my kid play with garbage?? Oh my gosh. I'M FAMOUS!!!" And then I tried to breathe like a normal person while I said to Dan, "Um, so... you've heard of (Name of ridiculously famous news site,) right?" and Dan said, "No." So that deflated my rapidly expanding ego back to its normal size.

They wanted me to participate either the next day or sometime in the future, and I sent back a really professional-sounding email that said something like, "Um. I'm babysitting my friend's toddler tomorrow. Can I do it another time?" And then they didn't answer my email. And I thought, "Augh! I blew my chance at my fifteen minutes of fame!" although actually the parenting panel lasts twenty minutes, so that made it extra disappointing - even more disappointing than that time I wasn't a Japanese television sensation. So then I watched part of the show they wanted me to be on and then emailed them again to let them know I really, really wanted to be on it. Because, you know, nothing says "I'm professional and eloquent" quite like obvious desperation. And then.... absolutely nothing happened.

Then in April, I got an email from someone at a huge marketing firm that was interested in syndicating some of my blog posts for some major brand websites, and I was like, "Oh my gosh! I'M FAMOUS FOR REAL THIS TIME!!" I had a long phone interview with a really nice guy, and the whole thing sounded extremely promising, but then when he asked how often I post, I told him, and he said that most of the websites they represent want to work with bloggers who post more frequently, but that maybe it would still work. I was supposed to get some kind of syndication and licensing paperwork to sign, but... it didn't come. So I emailed him a follow-up email the next day... and again a few days later. And... nothing.

Then a few days before Mother's Day, I got an email from a reporter for another large news website asking if she could interview me for a piece she was writing about modern stay-at-home moms. Naturally, I thought, "I AM DEFINITELY, SERIOUSLY FAMOUS FOR REAL THIS TIME!!" She interviewed me, (and she was very sweet,) and she said that the article would be published on Mother's Day and she'd email me when it was up. And then Mother's Day came and went. I checked the site obsessively, and... no me. What appears to have happened is that one of the other moms she interviewed had a much more human interest-y (what? That's a word now.) life story than the rest of us did, so she did an article that was just about that mom instead.

So a few weeks ago, I submitted a post to a website called Scary Mommy, which has over 287,000 fans on Facebook and gets more than 10 million pageviews a month. And Jill, the mom behind Scary Mommy, responded within half an hour to say that she loved the post and that it was perfect for her site and that she'd publish it on May 27. To which I thought, "I'll believe it when I see it." Because, come on guys, I may not learn quickly, but I learn eventually.

But this morning, MY POST WAS ON SCARY MOMMY! Ahhh!! It's a post about things you really need to do before you have your first child, and it's already been shared over 10,000 times on Facebook (I may have been stalking it all morning like a giant weirdo.)

I'm not sure if I want to read any of the comments because I'm sure there will be negative ones, and I don't want any rain on my parade. (There's got to be at least one that says, "What was up with that random quotation mark in the middle of nowhere? And how did you manage to get the name wrong for the book What to Expect When You're Expecting?" Answer: I don't know!! But it will haunt me forever. Sigh.)

So, now that I've totally been published on the internet, you're welcome to bring your laptop or smart phone over, and I'll gladly autograph the screen for you. We famous people like to give back to society.

(For the record, "famous" is defined as "18 whole new likes on your blog's Facebook page in one day," right? Just checking...)

Happy SITS Day to Me!

I'm today's featured blogger over at The SITS Girls, and I'm kind of really excited!

If you're here from SITS, hi and welcome to my space! I'm Bethany - mommy to a very energetic (and very talkative) toddler boy and wife to an amazing ER doctor. I like to talk, write, and overshare just a little too often. I love good books, my Keurig, Christmas, napping, and having a house full of friends (although preferably not all at the same time.) I love Jesus. I seem to have a lot of weird interactions with strangers.

I used to work for an awesome non-profit foundation, and then we moved for my husband Dan's residency, and I spent two years working as a substitute teacher (and I have no end of ridiculous stories from that adventure.) Now I stay home with my most interesting adventure yet.

I hope you'll stay a while, check out some of of my other posts (you can see some of my most popular posts to the left,) and leave a comment or two! I look forward to checking out your awesome blogs!
Thanks for stopping by!

Clicking this lady equals a vote for me over at Top Mommy Blogs,  so if you want to click her, I won't say no!

Here's what's going on in my life. How about you?

Remember how I said that I was supposed to get two MRIs today?

Whomp whomp. (But let's all take a minute to appreciate the superb editing job I did in getting rid of my last name from that Facebook post.)

In other news, I was nominated as a Top 25 Family Blogger at Circle of Moms (I'm not entirely sure what that means yet, but I hope it comes with a parade.) So if you want me to win, you can click the pleasant little circle below and then click the little heart that says "vote" by my name. 

You can vote for me once every 24 hours through October 31, and if I win, I'll ask the parade to go by your house as a thank you. (Assuming there is a parade. But there's gotta be one, right??) So, you know... please and thank you!

Annnndddd.... I should have some news soon about a way that you guys can all win some awesome free stuff (I mean, not all of you. Just some of you. Sorry. Hold your applause.) But I'm waiting until I'm really sure.

So, what's new with you?

Not-at-all-Wordless Wednesday

Dan, Lucas and I went away for a few days to celebrate a friend's wedding, and while I was gone, Meredith from the blog Pile of Babies mentioned my blog in her post "My favorite losers from Blogger Idol 2013," the title of which makes it sound like it was mean but it actually wasn't. So I checked my blog when we got back home and saw that I had a bunch of new visitors from her post, and my reaction was pretty much "Woo hoo! New readers! Oh, dang... my last post was about snot." And I was going to post a brief recap of our trip, including the story of how and why Lucas vomited ALL over himself and Dan, but then I thought that maybe my new readers might be scared away if I had two subsequent posts about gross bodily fluids. (See how I pretended I wasn't going to tell you about the vomit but then I told you anyway? It's a new literary technique I just invented. Just be glad I'm not posting the pictures of it.)

So anyway, here's a video of Lucas chasing the beam on his flashlight. Enjoy.

Also, could you pretty please click this? I don't really get anything if you do, other than a warm fuzzy feeling. But I kind of like warm fuzzy feelings.

The one in which I am not a Japanese television sensation

Almost two years ago, I posted a video on YouTube of me telling my parents and my brother that I was pregnant. As of today, it has over 300,000 views, which sounds impressive unless you've ever spent four hours on YouTube because you were looking for a specific video of a comedian you liked but then somehow spent the next three hours and forty-five minutes watching a few dozen first dance videos from the weddings of people you don't know. People kill a lot of time watching random videos on YouTube.

In order to post the video, I had to create a gmail account. Then a few months ago, I forgot the password (and email address - which turned out to be just my first and last name, making me feel extra stupid for having forgotten it), so later I created yet another gmail account to create this blog and pretended I had never created the other one. So when I wanted to see my own video, I had to search for it using the search feature like everybody else because I couldn't log in to my account. Well I searched for it today, and discovered that somebody else had copied my YouTube video and then reposted it as their own... which is weird and vaguely disconcerting, although I can't really say why. I wanted to contact them to ask them to remove it and also report it to YouTube, but that involved actually being able to log into the account. (Insert long, boring story of how I spent 45 minutes trying to figure out how to log into an account for which I remembered neither the email address nor the password.)

Anyway, the point of this story (and I swear it has one) is that when I finally figured out how to log in, I realized that I had unread messages in the account. And one of them was asking if they could put my video on a Japanese television show called "Tokudane Toukou Doga." No joke. (I mean, I'm not joking, I have no idea if they were.) According to the email, they wanted to interview me on Skype. I wouldn't be paid, but they would send me a copy of the program (which would include the video that I already own and can watch anytime I want anyway. So, yay?)

I googled the show, and apparently it's real, as evidenced by a lot of people blogging about having their video featured on it. But the email was from May 2012, so there goes my big chance for super-stardom. (And by super-stardom, I obviously mean "having my video on a Japanese television show that may or may not actually be watched by anyone.") I can't promise that I won't let my status as an only-one-year-and-a missed-email-away-from-being-a-minor-celebrity-in-Japan go to my head, but I can promise that I will try.


To be fair, I should probably note that 99% of the comments on the video were girls saying that my brother is hot. So technically, he was the one who was almost a minor celebrity. Way to steal the 
almost-spotlight.

Edited: Ok, since some of my friends asked, here's the video. If you want to see it on YouTube, the link is here. If you want to see a smaller, blurrier version, the person who re-uploaded it still hasn't removed it, so that's nice.

If you click this, I will autograph something for you. In Japanese.