Blog Theme Scheduling for 2010-2011

Every year, we mommybloggers cover much of the same territory, jump on many of the same arguments and bandwagons. It's nearly an annual cycle, but it lacks that organization.

So I was thinking - should we get organized about this? Plan a schedule ahead of time so people can arm themselves with tidbits scattered across the internet from a nice variety of some-authoritative, some-dubious sites, and pre-think their funniest or most vitriolic comments, saving them up for throwing at the right time, like storing snowballs in the deep freeze?

Our blog posts could be awesome with the extra preptime! Maybe something like this:

October - Hallowe'en is coming, so it's a good time for the scary/non-scary costume debate and the what-to-give out, what/how-much-to-allow-your-child-to-eat comparison. Bonus topic on safety and baby items for this year provided by Fisher Price.

November - By now the school-year grind and holiday prep will have us all squeezed and short of time and patience. Let's pit stay-at-home moms against working-elsewhere moms in a bitter showdown about who has less time and more stress in dealing with these pressures!

December - Holidays are coming for most major religions - posts about in-law angst and how to deal with invasive/pushy/competitive relatives will make us all feel better here, right? Plus it leaves lots of room for comparing notes on how we discipline and whether other family members/family friends have the right to discipline our kids. That should counteract the feel-good with just the right note of strife. More arguing means more traffic, remember - what a great holiday gift to give your blogger pals! If they have ads (see June, below), they might even pay for a gift or two with those extra clicks.

January - this is all about resolutions, of course, and that leads into shreds/couch-to-5Ks/before-after pictures, and maybe some response posts about the beauty of all sorts of bodies and becoming comfy in ours instead? Also bucket lists/anti-bucket lists. Time for (more) navel-gazing! Which also means we should somewhere be accused of narcissism and have to respond, I suppose. Wow, busy month.

February - By this point, the Old Navy fiasco burning up the various cables that connect us will be long in the rearview mirror far down the feedreader, so it must be about time to revisit the breastfeed versus bottle feed debate by now, n'est-çe pas?

March - By now, winter has felt long and we are ready to be done, but we're still cocooning some, because yes, it's still cold. Which makes it hard to get out of bed in the morning and put your feet down on that chilly floor. Sounds like a good time to debate sleep methods! Take your stance against any of these great sleep-related topics: cosleeping, crib sleeping, crying it out, baby monitors, naps, bedtimes, or why they just. won't. sleep. Don't forget to provide advice and point out what others must be doing wrong!

April - Easter usually falls somewhere around here. Good time for talk about fictional characters, lies we tell/don't tell our children about Easter bunnies, tooth fairies, and other gift bringers. Probably a good time to lump in other anxiety-soothers/behaviour-reinforcers that we use that might not be strictly speaking truthful. Start dredging up old family stories about how you were raised now in order to plan your best defense of how you turned out just fine, thank you, despite this sort of thing.

May - Spring is here and babies are arriving all over the natural world! Let's celebrate by trashing moms who delivered their babies differently than us, and and talking about how proud/ashamed we are of our own experience! After all, it's not about the beauty of the life we've created, it's all about the details of how it happened to get here. Obviously having the opposite experience means those other moms are overly crunchy/victims of modern medicine/missing out/deluded/weird/martyrs.

June - With BlogHer coming and speakers getting lined up and people really getting prepped for it, it's the season for discussion over sponsorship. This should also include glee/disgust over swag, as well as whether you can/should/do have ads on your website and sponsoring of bloggers as well as conference sponsorship, so we can hit all "selling-out" birds with one stone.

July - BlogHer, duh. Discuss what to pack and how nervous you are ahead of time, and afterward, who snubbed who, how much it's like high school, and whether it's the "bigger" and "more popular" bloggers' responsibility to include newer, "smaller" bloggers somehow. Carry on with above discussion s about sponsors and swag as you wish.

August - Summer is the perfect time to debate helicopter/zamboni/free-range parenting styles, since all the kids are wanting to play outside and will even meet others in the park, bringing on those blog-fodder-worthy clashes of parenting. Got to love it when the posts write themselves on your family outing!

September - Let's call a truce and sit back on this month, since it's the time when everyone is all weepy about their babies going to school, and let's face it, we are all busy getting organized and dealing with new schedules, anyhow.

There you have it, ladies. Plenty of time to line up your posts and responses in advance.

You're welcome.
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