Sea Cow Circus

What started as a blog to keep our friends and family far away up-to-date on the mostly boring happenings of our lives, with spotty posting, soon became a pregnancy journal, with ridiculously regular posting. It was started for others, but now it is largely for me - a way to capture all of the things, big and small, that we're going through. A place to record the moments of Elle's life. Her baby book has a place for all of the basic details - weights, heights, immunizations, first smile, first tooth, etc. But I can't put a video of the first time Elle rolled in her baby book. I don't go in to great detail on the sleeping patterns of three-month-old Elle in the baby book. I can, however, look back at the blog and see when Elle's first trip was and how it went. I can see what challenges we were facing at any given time, whether it be during my pregnancy or as new parents. This blog is my spot to write about Elle, vacations and anniversaries, but also the place where I pour my heart out and expose some of my thoughts, feelings and beliefs, on parenting and life in general.

Our last name has been in the Web address since we started the blog in 2007. As we've gained readers and I've put more information out on the Web, I've felt like we were borderline "too exposed," and I've often held back sometimes (I know, hard to believe, huh? What ELSE could I possibly have to say?!). But I wanted to be a little more anonymous, or maybe not be so obviously revealed, so we decided to make the switch to a custom domain.

Tim and I started to brainstorm a new name for the blog. I wanted something timeless, something that I wouldn't get sick of, something that was a bit more mysterious than our current name and we wouldn't feel compelled to change again in three years. Tim threw out random words, slow to embrace the concept of what I was going for. I threw out one-liners from favorite TV shows and inside jokes. And in the end, Tim pretty much produced our new name, which is whimsical, memorable, quirky, timeless and meaningful to us: "Sea Cow Circus."

*pauses for chortles, head shaking, eye rolling and general "Wha?!" type responses*

Tim read once that "kale is just slow lettuce." He told me this fact. Repeatedly. We find this random tidbit funny. So I threw out "kale is just slow lettuce" as a blog name idea, and then it kind of evolved. Manatees eat kale. We live in a part of Florida closely associated with manatees as well as a well-known circus family, we love aquariums and manatees, our life is a circus ... and the name makes me envision cute little sea cow families with a mommy and daddy manatee pushing a baby sea cow (or cows) in a stroller. The photo in the new header was actually taken along the (wait for it) Manatee River.

So there you have it - our new home is seacowcircus.com, but if you type in our old blog address, you'll get here, too. Please be patient as we work out the kinks with links and our redesign - this will likely be an on-going process as we play around and learn a bit about our new home :)