A quick post about our previous pregnancy blogs and baby blogs: Plus Our One Year Anniversary!

Jane received an email from a woman who had asked if there was an easy way to go back and look at our pregnancy and baby blog posts in order.

I thought I’d post the answer here in case there’s anyone else who would like to do the same.

All you have to do is go to: http://www.hisboyscanswim.com/page/39 (opens in a new window)

On that page, you’ll see:

If you scroll down to the bottom of the last post, you’ll see “Next Entries”.  You can follow that all the way to the current baby blog posts.

Now as you scroll through the pregnancy and baby blog posts, you can click on the headline of a post to view the rest of the post.  Then just hit the back button and you’ll go back to the previous page.

I hope this helps you guys!

And you know what, I was going to stop the blog posts here… but looking back at the first blog post I wrote, I saw the date… and the one year anniversary is coming up in a few days!

We’ve received a lot of emails and comments from many of you who have gone all the way back to the beginning of our blog and have read our entire journey!  Thank you so much.  That amazes Jane and I to say the least.

We owe all of our readers a BIG thank you for hanging around here, commenting on our posts, and all of your help when we needed it.  You have all been such a BIG help to us – in so many ways… so many times.  Thank all of you.  Really.  Man… we’ve been through a lot here.

From postpartum depression to breastfeeding.  From being scared and unsure to becoming excited and confident.  From the struggles to the celebrations.  We’ve been an open book – and it’s been quite a journey that’s really only beginning.  Funny that it’s just beginning… 391 pregnancy and baby blog posts later!

From being accused of being a ‘fake blog’ a few times in comments on our blog, other blogs, and on Twitter (which made Jane and I laugh) to people attacking Jane or I on decisions we made awhile back.  The ride hasn’t been smooth all the time – but what can you expect when you’re blogging about real things that happen in your life?  :)  There’s always some bumps in the road!  We’ve learned to keep pushing forward and stay positive.

And that brings me to….

Happy Birthday To His Boys Can Swim!

On December 26, 2009, it will have been exactly ONE YEAR since our very first blog post by yours truly.  One year.  Amazing.  We’ve been through a lot here.  From posts that’ll make you cry to posts that’ll make you spit out your coffee from laughter.  (Really happened to someone!)

Allow me to take a trip through memory lane here a little…

From giving away thousands and thousands of dollars in prizes on our contests, to winning several awards, to pouring our hearts out many times, and when I blogged when I was on daddy duty in the middle of the night 1/2 asleep the first 1-2 weeks Monkey was brought home.  (I literally fell asleep blogging many times during those rough first few weeks!  And some of the posts make no sense whatsoever. LOL!)

I also remember for the first week or two that Monkey was home that I took over on Jane’s Twitter account.  I was on there all the time asking for help.  When I went shopping I asked for help MANY times and had so many people tweeting back.  We saved a lot of money many times – and learned about many new products we would have never known about.

And we also want to thank ALL of the wonderful people who have donated products for our contests, allowed us to review items, etc. Thank you so much.

Since our first blog post, our blog and Jane’s Twitter following grew quickly.  (Jane now has over 21,400 followers on Twitter which blows us away!)  We were mentioned in both Pregnancy & Newborn magazine, Pregnancy magazine this year, which was really cool.

And here’s some crazy stats about His Boys Can Swim that blew us away tonight and thought we’d share:

- In the last year, we have had over 1,100,000 (yes, 1.1 million) page views on our blog.

- People have visited our blog from 197 different countries!  Seriously, 197 counties!  No joke.  Places like: Congo, Mali, Cook Islands, South Korea, Monaco, Rwanda, Paraguay, Angola, Fiji, Syria, Iraq, Nepal, Guam, Bahamas, Denmark, and 180+ more.  Crazy, isn’t it?

- The least amount of visitors have come from Christmas Island, who has a whopping population of 1,403 people. Only 1 person viewed our blog from there.  If that’s you, tell your pregnant friends and new moms about us.  (Note: Christmas Island is a on-governing territory of Australia in the Indian Ocean, but in our stats it shows up as its own country.)  (Another note, Christmas Island does have a huge crab population.  120 million to be exact. Check out this video to see them in action.

- The top 3 states that view our blog are: California, New York, and Texas.

- The state with the least amount of people who have viewed our blog is Wyoming.  What’s up Wyoming?  Aren’t you having any babies over there!?

So there you have it.  Oh, and in case you’re wondering what will 2010 bring… Jane and I have some plans, ideas, etc. that we’ll share down the road when the time is right.  Some of the plans involve YOU in a big way.  So stay tuned on that one for sure.

The biggest plan is to keep pushing forward, sharing our story into the wild world of parenthood and stay up-to-date on the world of pregnancy.  And who knows… maybe we’ll try for a Baby Jane?  ;)  Maybe we can say that Baby Jane is a business expense for our blog and write off each and every single penny we spend there.  LOL  Wishful thinking.

Anyway, thanks again to ALL of you.  You’re what makes this blog exciting for us.  You’re the reason why we decided to open up to the world.  You’re the reason why we’re on here each and every single day.  Jane and I TRULY appreciate all of you!

- Tarzan

P.S… OK.  I’ll tell you one thing about 2010 plans/ideas… One thing Jane and I have been thinking about lately is helping other pregnant moms-to-be and new moms get their blogs/websites going and growing.  There’s a LOT to it as you can imagine.  Between HisBoysCanSwim.com and all of our little side projects, there is a wealth of information we can share.  I’ll bring it up in another post sometime to see if there would be any interest before we put in the crazy amount of time it would take to create all of the training.  Because once you learn all this stuff, there are many, many little things you can do to make some side money online, which I’m sure no one wouldn’t be opposed to making a little extra money each month.  Just one quick example here real quick…

I used some of what I learned here to put up a brand new website this month.  It took me 15 minutes to create it and 15 minutes to get it out there.  Here’s a screenshot of the earnings this month so far:

The first two transactions were denied for some reason, but went through the next day.  The total earnings for this little site for December so far has been: $145.80 in commissions that will be mailed to us in January.  Zero was spent on advertising.  All that was spent was about $10 for the domain name and hosting.  So no, not a life-changing amount of money by any means, but that’s just one example of a few sites I’ve recently started with Jane’s help.  Anyway, like I said… we’re just thinking about putting something together in 2010 for pregnant moms and current moms who want to get their blogs going and growing… and then maybe show some ways to make extra money online using the same methods on other sites.

So, we’ll see.  WHEW.  This “quick little post” I was planning morphed into so many different directions here!

You might also want to read:

1. His Boys Can Swim chosen as one of the “Fab Fifteen” pregnancy blogs!
2. A quick update on the His Boys Can Swim Pregnancy Blog Contest
3. Update on previous post: No divorce here
4. Follow-up to previous post about postpartum depression
5. Pre-pregnancy & post-pregnancy & the difference of Friday nights

Tagged as: baby, Pregnancy Blog