Welcome to Volume 2

Welcome to Volume 2 of Having A Fields Day. Most, if not all of you who are reading this were familiar with our previous blog under the same name and you may be wondering why I have chosen to move to a completely new address.

The original version of this blog, titled Little Baby Fields, began as a simple pregnancy journal way back in 2007. I had no idea it would morph into so much more. I used the blog as a tool to share my pregnancy and eventually baby pictures with interested family and friends. Somewhere along the way, I found my voice and began sharing more than just pictures and quick snippets and I liked it. I liked being able to voice my opinion in a safe place where I could assume that most of my loyal readers were people who shared my interests. As the years flew by, my writing became less about the cute things my kids were doing or my musings as a mom but instead became my platform for Autism, SPD, natural parenting, and Twice Exceptional advocacy since those were the things that consumed our life at that time. I even wrote a 30 day series on Autism Awareness which actually became the catalyst of my blogging burnout. After that, I felt like I had said all I had to say on Autism and quite frankly I was tired of it consuming my life...and  my child.

As my kids continued to grow, the name Little Baby Fields no longer felt fitting as my kids were no longer babies. I changed the name to Having A Fields Day which seemed more fitting considering that every day seemed like a wild field day and well....there's also that whole cutesy play on our last name.

On my previous blog I was open, more than I should have been, on a lot of the struggles that my kids were going through as well as the laundry list of diagnoses we had become much too familiar with. I began to lay awake at night wondering if I had set them up to be targeted by kids who heard from their parents that my kids were maybe just a teensy tiny bit different. I began to write less and less until finally I realized that something had to change. I missed blogging but I felt uncomfortable with all of that information floating around.

That all leads us up to this point where I present to you the next era of Having A Fields Day. While I know that a majority of my readers know my kids real names, I do ask that in the comments you refer to them by the nicknames I have chosen to use for them. The name changes are nothing more than a safety precaution. I do plan on moving over some of my old posts, especially those relating to Autism, but only after I go through them with a fine tooth comb and change names. Many of those posts have helped other families in similar situations and I hope that they will continue to provide hope to families of newly diagnosed kids. A lot of the other issues that I went into much detail about is now only being shared on a "need to know basis".

I am incredibly grateful and thankful for those of you who have followed me along this journey. Your comments on the old blog were always appreciated and just so you know, they haven't been deleted. Should there ever be an old post you want me dig up for informational purposes if it relates to something you are going through with your child, just let me know. It's all still floating out there in cyberspace under a cloak of invisibility.

As for new readers who are wondering what in the world all this chaos is about, I welcome you and will leave you to figure the puzzle out for yourselves.