Niki Dancing…

I’m still learning how to navigate my way around WordPress. Although I admit WordPress is a better blogging format because it’s more reliable at content protection, it’s FRIGGIN HARD to format things! I miss Blogger’s simplicity. I knew “BloggerLand” like the back of my hand. Nevertheless, I’m still chugging. I’m posting this video not only because I think it’s stinkin’ adorable, but because I want to see if I can still embed videos in my posts. Let’s hope this works!!

Enjoy this video of Niki dancing to T.I.’s “Got Yo Back” — this is what happens to your kids when a majority of  sib-in-laws are still young. I had NO IDEA Niki knew howto “do westside.” Yikes!

Guess Who’s Back?

On October 13th at 12:30 am the unthinkable happened…

my blog “died”!

I was trying to cancel an old Google account and somehow a computer glitch caused me to accidentally delete my primary Google account. It looked like I was fully signed out of my primary account, but evidently in “Googleland”, I was not. So, my primary Google account, along my fourlittlelions.com blog, vanished into Internet nothingness.

It. Was. Gone.

I was devastated. I started bawling my eyes out when I realized what happened. Seriously guys, I could feel my body having a visceral reaction to my blog’s unexpected “death.” And, I’m sure my pregnancy exacerbated my emotions too! I was crying so hard in my heartbroken panic that I woke up John. And even he couldn’t believe the news. Not only was that blog important to me, but it’s important to him too. (John’s a little emo sometimes so he likes to read old entries from time to time whenever he feels like reminicing about our cubs.) On top of that, I also used my blog to document Niki’s medical history. We both like to think that the cubs will read my blogs someday, and appreciate it for all of its embarassing glory. But alas, Blogger broke my heart.

All of those memories….gone. All of the blood, sweat, and tears I put into writing about our family stories, my grief, and Niki’s journey…gone.

I realize that I probably should have kept back-ups if it was that important to me, but I had complete trust in Blogger.  My Myspace and Xanga blogs are still up and I started those over seven years ago! So, I simply never thought something like that would happen to me.

But when it did happen to me? Oh man…I can still feel the ache in my heart.

Once I got over my initial breakdown, I immediately tried to restore my Google account. But…it didn’t work. Next I scoured the Internet and Google help forums to find a solution to my problem and still…nothing worked. The situation was hopeless. I could feel tears and desperation welling up inside of me. It was late and I was drained.

All of the help forums basically stated that my blog wasn’t going to come back.

But…. I wasn’t going to give up yet. My blog may have “died”, but I found a way to get the text from my old blog entries. It was  painstaking work, but I utilized “view source” on a cached copy of my blog. From there, I obtained links to my old blog posts for each month and saved those too. Then, I used those individual links to search Bing, Google, and Yahoo to get cached versions of my old blog entries.

From that point on it was all about copying, pasting, organizing, and saving. I’ll upload those entries onto WordPress someday.

I stayed home from work that day because Niki had a horrible tummy ache was up crying all night. (The last time she had a bowel movement was on Friday so she was miserable.) In between taking care of Niki, nursing my emotional wounds, and recouperating from small stress-induced crying jags, I spent my day/evening/late night  safely nestling each and every blog entry I’ve ever written on my computer’s hard drive.

I finished shortly after 1:00 this morning.

I was physically and emotionally exhausted when I finished, but I got the job done. Out of all the blogs I’ve written since I joined Blogger in 2008, I only lost 1o of them. (And actually, I only cared about 2 out of the 10 posts because they were letters to Ethan and Niki for the 2nd & 1st birthday.) I wasn’t able to keep the “photo essay aspect” of my entries — those went down the drain with my Google Picasa account — but I have copies of those photos on my back-up drive anyway.

What happened yesterday was a nightmare, but I learned some important lessons from this experience.

1. Back up EVERYTHING.
2. Despite hardly getting comments, I discovered that you guys really DO read my blogs. I was surprised with how many messages I got from people looking for my blog and/or offering help. Even some of you lurkers made it out of the woodwork. 😉
3. Most importantly of all, I learned just how important this “writing thing” is to me. Sometimes it’s feels like another task on my to-do list, but now I realize how much my blog means to me.

I had no idea what I had until I thought it was gone. Now that it’s back, I’m cherishing it forever. I’m so happy that things worked ou in the end.

Welcome to my new blog!  I fell, dusted myself off, and started over again. 🙂