Okay, that's long enough

Here's what happened:

I wrote something that I thought was funny about my search for a nanny, and someone made an anonymous rude comment, something about me being a nightmare to interview for. I deleted it, and the person made another comment, something about being "censored" on my blog, and I responded something like, "Thanks for your concern, but this is actually just my family blog, not really public domain ...." Next thing I know, I have many people making really rude and even hurtful comments (one about how if I was a real woman I'd stay home with my kids), and it turns out there is a craigslist ad by the original commenter directing people to my blog. So I reported the ad to craigslist and they removed it, I deleted the nanny search blog entry, I made my blog private, I increased security for who could find it, and I removed some personal information from the blog and from the SB message board.

Of course the first thing you wonder is whether its one of the nannies I wrote about (and changed their names). It wasn't. A couple weeks ago, a friend suggested I add a "statcounter" to my blog, and I tried it out. For a few days, it was really interesting to see that people were happening upon the blog from several different countries! Cool! Then I forgot about it. So when I got the first rude comment, I went to the stat counter, which showed it came from Rhode Island. I don't know anyone in Rhode Island. Yet this person chose this as their hill to die on. That is also how I found the craigslist ad.

I guess I can see how someone might have been offended by the nanny blog if that is the only thing they had read of my blog and didn't know me, and I regret being quite so .... sassy. So that post is removed.

But I'm not going to stop blogging, because this is where I record my memories, and this is a big time in my life, and I want to remember this. A friend of mine said, "You're going to have to be more careful about what you put online about your family" and at first I agreed, but you know what? That is intentional. When I was pregnant with Nate, I found absolutely nothing hopeful about Spina Bifida online. No stories about normal childhoods, no pictures of typical looking kids who just happened to have SB, no stories about the families' lives outside of surgeries and pain, both physical and emotional. So I have chosen to be very open about my and my family's life from the get-go.

I have to admit that a perfect stranger deciding to go so far as to make a craigslist ad about me really shook me up. I don't understand why someone would go to such lengths about a stranger. I grudgingly take certain precautions (not make the blog as easy to find unless someone has a link to it), but I am just going to continue the blog and hope my stalker moves on.

Dear stalker,
I'm sorry I offended you. I have deleted the post. Please let me have my blog back.
Thank you,
Colleen