Here it goes:
Hi all, my name is Lisa Ng. "Ng" is pronounced "ing" -- it's Cantonese. This blog's name is Expandng because I began blogging when I was pregnant with our first child (Nov 2009). Get it? Expand Ng, expanding my family? I love puns. Since it was my first pregnancy, I mostly blogged about fetus size and how I was feeling. I also had a few posts on shopping/couponing successes because it was fad at the time.
After our son was born, and my world turned upside down, I didn't blog for about four months. When I finally got back to blogging, I wrote a lot about our struggles as new parents and what we were enjoying about parenting, but I also continued posting about shopping/couponing successes. Early this year, I finally came to the realization that others do couponing much better, and that's when I finally asked myself, What is my blog? Why do I blog?
I know I'm a mommy blog (though the hubby says he'll inject some "manly" into this blog by writing unrelated posts about beer -- we'll see). But I've struggled to find an "angle" for this blog -- a focus -- something to set this blog apart from other mommy blogs….and you know what? I don't have an angle -- I'm not funny, snarky, I don't cuss, I'm not vulgar, I'm not an expert in anything per se. I'm just me.
I blog because, first, I want a record of the growth and adventures in our expanding family. I blog because I want my friends to know what's up with us, even if we're far away. Lastly, and this was unplanned, I now blog to meet other bloggers. I'm reading this book called "Unfriend Yourself", and the author writes that social networking may connect people but true communion (i.e., community) happens only face-to-face. Though I can see his point (there's a lot of people I don't "commune" with via social networks), I have to disagree because through blogging I've met and interacted with awesome people whom I probably wouldn't have met otherwise.
So, if you're reading this post because you signed up for Blogelina's 100 comment event, thanks for taking the time to visit. Here's some tidbits about the site:
- The landing page (i.e., expandng.com) shows snippets of blog posts with "Click here to continue reading" links to (hopefully) decrease page-loading time (test your blog's load time using pingdom).
- You'll find similar posts at the end of blog posts that LinkWithin has selected as "you might also like". "Similar posts" provides links to posts of similar topic.
- The right sidebar has a lot of goodies:
- In a nutshell gives a short bio and a recap of this week's posts
- Icons are links to RSS feed, Facebook page, Twitter, etc.
- You can also follow the blog using Google Friend Connect.
- There's a search box, list of "Labels", the top read posts of the month, and a blog archive.
- The left sidebar has links to About Us, our son's milestones, our son's list of words (hard to keep these lists up to date since he's doing so much more now at 18-mo), fun kid-friendly activities in our region, a list of websites for coupons, deals, etc. (I know, I can't break the habit!), and finally, my Mommy Mysteries series because every blog needs a series -- contribute yours!
- Check out some recent photos of our son (J) on the left sidebar too. Most of them are originally posted at my amateur photography blog, capturng.com (again with the puns!)
If you're reading this post because you normally would anyways, thanks to you too! I appreciate your time. I appreciate your interaction with me. Thanks to Blogelina for setting this whole thing up. I'm looking forward to checking out new blogs.
~Lisa
P.S. Enter my $25 The Children's Place gift card giveaway. You have until Mar 9!
So, why do you blog?
