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calpops · 3 years

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the milestone | c.h.

Your daughter reaches a milestone that warms your hearts during the Christmas season.

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Day 3 of 12 dates with calmas | dates with cal masterlist

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“Five and a half months old,” Calum says in complete disbelief into a tape recorder in his hand, a new habit of keeping voice recordings for Mila forming as a chronicle for her life. Sometimes he speaks directly to the tape, sometimes he speaks to her and lets the tape record, and now he always has the recorder at the ready for the little noises and near laughter that she’s growing into.

Mila lays in his lap while one arm is wrapped around her for support. Calum looks down at her with a grin and discards the tape recorder on the couch cushion next to him. His free hand goes to her, fingertip lightly touching the tip of her nose to elicit the sweetest smile he’ll never tire of. It reminds him of you. For as much as she looks like him, he sees nothing but remnants of you from the inside out in her. Her smiles, the joy she radiates and the strength she has. Calum taps her nose again, watches as her smile grows and feels his own do the same.

“That’s mommy’s smile isn’t it?” he asks as she wiggles a hand and lets out a noise as if to confirm Calum’s statement. “Yeah it is,” he coos and catches her small hand in his, another little noise escaping her as he leans down to kiss the tip of her nose and forehead. “I bet your laugh is going to be just like mommy’s too.”

Mila wiggles again, hand moving in Calum’s delicate hold. Her feet kick just slightly and though Calum doesn’t want time to move so fast he can already envision her walking. She doesn’t even crawl yet, can’t even rock back and forth on hands and knees as a building block to crawling. All of her doctors warned Calum and you that premature babies often need extra time for the fundamentals but with her hand in his and feet kicking he can see it all play out before his eyes. Crawling, walking, talking, growing up.

Calum gives her tummy a light little tickle and her feet kick a little more. Her Christmas pajamas make the ordeal even cuter, printed little reindeer moving with her every motion. He wants to call you out to the living room to see this, to enjoy her while she’s awake but you’re resting in the bedroom after a night without sleep. You still worry about her during nights, the habit nearly broken but coming back together in times of stress. You thought she felt warm, almost feverish, worried she was getting sick, stayed up with her all night and by morning realized she was just fine. So Calum leaves you to your sleep and continues to entertain Mila.

“You know we have another surprise for mommy tomorrow,” Calum tells her, finding that he has casual conversation with her just as much as he would with you or Duke. “Don’t tell, but…” Calum continues and whispers plans for tomorrow to Mila as she continues to grin at the sound of his voice and the compliance of his hand holding her wiggling one. “You two are going to have the best Christmas season ever.”

Once his plans are laid out he dips back down and scoops her up so she rests fully in his arms and it’s not such a long descent to give her full cheeks little kisses. He’s not sure if he’s only convinced himself of it or if she truly does respond with noises and motions to affections. Wrinkling nose, tiny coos and kicking feet. With her in his arms and happy as can be he starts talking to her again, the tape recorder detailing all of the words he tells her for a time she can listen to them again and remember. Amidst the words Calum gives her kisses and tickles and makes funny faces, always chasing a happy reaction from her.

He stops short and falls silent after a sentence and a tap on the nose. Much more than a small noise comes from her, tiny little giggles play Calum’s heartstrings like a symphony. Her laughter is light and delighted, the smile on her face bright and full. The giggles stop after just a moment and Calum has to shake himself to pull himself back to reality and the newfound quiet. For a moment he doesn’t believe what he just heard.

“Did you just laugh?” he asks with furrowed brows. “Was that a real laugh for the first time? Mila! You giggled,” Calum adds on in a breath of enchanted disbelief. A puff of air escapes him and his arms tighten around her to bring her closer to him, to cradle her against his chest and get on the move to find you.

He goes down the hallway without a thought, Mila back to being quiet. The bedroom door is still shut but he opens it to find you sleeping. He hesitates for only a moment; deciding you’d want to be woken for this moment, for this beautiful and heartwarming noise and milestone.

“Sweetheart,” he prods in a gentle voice to rouse you peacefully, though it doesn’t stop you from waking suddenly and startled. He sees the panic on your face immediately and hopes his smile clues you into the fact that nothing bad has happened. Something good. Something worth waking for. “Mila just laughed.”

You rub your eyes and the tiredness away as the news slowly sinks in. “She laughed? Like… laughed laughed?”

“Downright giggled,” Calum answers and steps closer to the bed with a still cheery Mila. “It was the sweetest thing I’ve ever heard.”

Your eyes go wide in shock and then soften to a sadness, Calum realizing you’re upset you missed it. You motion for him to sit with you and ask with your eyes and outstretched arms for Mila to be with you.

“How? Why? What happened?” you ask as he hands you Mila and she gets settled in your hold.

Calum relays the previous events and sidles up to your side so he can face Mila as well. He tickles her tummy and taps her nose and watches you light up with awe as another giggle comes from her. Your smile stretches across your entire face and reaches your eyes with glinting happiness. Calum feels warm from the inside out, heart about ready to burst as he does it all again and another round of giggles comes from her.

“My turn,” you say and Calum watches as you make your baby laugh. Her giggles make you laugh and yours make Calum chuckle. “I didn’t expect her to be laughing like this so soon.”

“It’s all because of you,” Calum responds.

“I’m not the one who got her to.”

“Yes you did. Can’t you hear it? That’s your giggle and she giggles for the same reasons as you,” Calum explains with a growing grin. He reaches for you, fingers lightly tickling you as you laugh. “She got it from you.”

He leaves you with an overjoyed Mila, knowing there’s no way you’ll let her go for at least a while and heads back to the living room. He finds the tape recorder on the couch and realizes it’s still on. Her first laugh is immortalized on tape. He hopes one day that you can all listen to it and laugh again.

—

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Tagged: @rosecolouredash @irwinkitten @golden-hood @who-do-you-love-5sos @caswinchester2000 @wildflowergrae @cuddlemecalx @malumsmermaid @babylon-corgis @outerspaceisbetterthannothing @mariellelovescupcakes @xhaileyreneex @gosh-im-short @loveroflrh @findingliam-o @flowerthug @g-l-pierce @talkfastromance4 @cashtonasfuck @sc0ttish-wildfl0wer @wastedheartcth @calumscalm @notinthesameguey @lukesfuckingbeard @myloverboyash @treatallwithkindness @haikucal @wiildflower-xxx @calum-uncrowned @egyptiangoldhood @drarryetcetera @another-lonely-heart @megz1985 @idk-harry @dinosaursandsocks @wildflower-cth @idontneedanyone @everyscarisahealingplace @myfavfanficsever @stormrider505 @karajaynetoday @333-xx @calumshpod @calumsphile @calumrose @justhereforcalum @grreatgooglymoogly @calumance @ashhhbeee @chicken-ona-stick @wish-you-were-here-hood @mantlereid @hemmingslftv @homeofpoetry @shamelessfangirl-3

#Calum hood blurbs #Calum hood imagines #5sos blurbs #5sos imagines #dad!cal #cal!dates #12dwc

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alanajacksontx · 7 years

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5 essential aspects of technical SEO you cannot neglect

Eighty-eight percent of B2B marketers now report using content marketing in their promotional strategies, according to the Content Marketing Institute.

Developing content and using SEO to drive rankings and traffic has become a fundamental part of digital strategies, not just for the thought leaders of the industry, but it has become standard across the spectrum.

Thanks in large part to this massive development of online content, there are now more than one billion websites available online.

This tremendous growth has resulted in an increasingly competitive online market, where brands can no longer find success through guesswork and intuition. Instead, they must rely on more sophisticated strategies and means of enticing new customers.

The art of SEO lies in helping customers find your relevant, helpful content when it would benefit them and then creating a pleasant experience for them while they visit your website. Hence, it is vital that marketers do not neglect their technical SEO.

Sites still need to be built and structured well so they can be found, crawled, and indexed, hopefully to rank well for relevant keywords. There are a few technical SEO strategies in particular that we believe brands should be paying close attention to get their site in front of their competitors.

How does technical SEO impact the bottom line?

According to research performed at my company, BrightEdge, over 50 percent of the traffic on your site is organic. This means that the majority of the people visiting your page arrived there because they thought your listing on the SERP appeared the most relevant to their needs.

Those who neglect their technical SEO will find that this can damage the rankings their pages receive on the SERPs as well as the engagement on the actual site. In other words, not applying these core technical SEO concepts will negatively impact the number of visitors received, and thus revenue for the brand.

Customers have reported that how well the site runs greatly impacts their decision about whether or not to make a purchase. More than three quarters of customers – 79 percent – report that when they encounter problems with a site’s performance, they are less likely to buy from them again.

These customers also hold sites to a high standard, with a single second delay in page loading lowering customer satisfaction by 16 percent. Other common consumer complaints about websites include sites crashing, poor formatting, and error notifications.

Technical SEO makes it easier for users to find the website and then navigate it. It has a direct impact on rankings and traffic as well as the overall user experience. It should be clear, therefore, the tremendous impact that poor technical strategies and orphan pages can have on the bottom line for any organization.

5 essential aspects of technical SEO that cannot be neglected

1. Site accessibility

Site owners should periodically verify that the site is completely accessible for both search engine spiders as well as users. Robots.txt, for example, can be useful at times when you do not want a page to be indexed, but accidentally marking pages to block the spider will damage rankings and traffic.

Brands should also look closely at their Javascript coding to ensure that the vital information for the website is easily discoverable. Since customers also regularly complain about error messages and sites failing to load, brands should be checking for 404 pages and related errors.

Given that more searches now occur on mobile than desktop, and the impending switch to a mobile-first index on Google, brands should also ensure that any content published is constructed for mobile usage.

When speaking about the user experience, visitors themselves also pay a considerable amount of attention to load speeds. Brands should optimize for load speeds, watching site features such as cookies and images, that can slow down pages when not used correctly.

Things to do to improve your site’s accessibility:

Check that robots.txt is not blocking important pages from ranking

Make sure the robots.txt contains the sitemap URL

Verify that all important resources, including JS and CSS are crawlable

Find and fix any 404 errors

Check that all content, including videos, plays easily on mobile

Optimize for load speed

2. Site structure

Navigation throughout the website should also be a main priority. Look at the organization of the site’s pages and how easily customers can get from one part of the site to another. The number of clicks it takes to get to a desired location should be minimized.

Many sites find it to be convenient to build websites using a taxonomy hierarchy. Creating clear categories of pages can help websites organize their content while also reducing the number of steps that visitors must go through to adequately engage with the brand.

As you explore your site navigation, also verify how well the pages have been interlinked so that prospective customers engaging with one piece of content are easily led to other material that they will likely enjoy. Check also for orphan pages and other content that might be hard to find. The key to a strong site structure is to consider the user experience so that useful material can be found intuitively.

Things to do to ensure your site structure is optimized:

Create a hierarchy that ensures important pages are 3 clicks from the home page or less

Uncover orphan pages and either delete them or add them to the site hierarchy

Check links for broken or redirects and repair them

3. Schema markup

Schema markup provides search engines with even more information about the pages on your site, such as what is available for sale and for how much, rather than leaving it open for interpretation by the spiders and algorithm.

Although Google does tend to be relatively accurate about the purpose of websites, schema markup can help minimize the potential for any mistakes. In a increasingly competitive digital ecosystem, brands do not want to leave themselves open to errors.

Schema has also been attracting attention because of its potential to help brands trying to gain extra attention on the SERP in the form of Quick Answers and other universal content. Brands that want events included in the new Google Events SERP feature, for example, should use schema to call the search engine’s attention to the event and its details.

Things to do to make sure your site has the correct level of schema markup:

Markup pages that have been optimized for Quick Answers and other rich answers

Markup any events you list on your page or transcripts for videos

Check for common schema errors including spelling errors, missing slashes, and incorrect capitalization

Use Google’s Structured Data Testing Tool to ensure the markup has been completed correctly

4. Site tags

As sites become more technical, such as developing content in multiple languages for overseas versions of the site, brands will similarly need to pay closer attention to the markup and tags used on the pages. Correctly-used hreflang tags, for example, will ensure that the content is correctly matched with the right country.

Although Google might be able to tell that a website has been written in English, an hreflang tag can help ensure that it shows the UK version to the English audience and the US version to those in the United States. Displaying the wrong version of the websites to the audience can damage the brand’s reputation and ability to engage with the audience.

Many brands will also find canonical tags to be highly useful. Using these tags will signify to Google which version of any particular content is original, and which is the distributed or replicated version. If a marketer wants to publish syndicated content on another website, or even create a PDF format of a standard web page, canonical tags can help avoid duplicate content penalties so that weaken content visibility.

Things to do to ensure your site content is tagged correctly:

Use hreflang tags to ensure that Google knows which country and language the content is intended for

Verify that hreflang tags use proper return tags

Use only absolute URLs with hreflang tags

Use canonical tags to avoid duplicate content when necessary

5. Effective optimization

While this might appear to be rudimentary SEO, it remains one of the most important steps as well. As we create this spectacular content that is tailored for specific user intents and lives on a well-constructed website, it still remains that the page itself must be well optimized.

If the page does not have the right keywords, then it will be a challenge for the search engines to understand where the content should be ranked and placed. Carefully determine keywords through keyword research, and then construct sentences that link the terms and long-tail keywords together to make your topic and expertise clear to the search engines and those considering consuming your content.

Things to do to improve technical SEO today:

Use keyword research to find important and in-demand search topics

Create sentences that effectively link different keywords together to show context

Place keywords in the page title, H tags, URL, and naturally in the content

Even as the industry matures with micro-moments and data-driven strategies, technical SEO remains critical to successfully building strong websites.

We believe that all brands should ensure that these five areas of technical SEO are a part of their digital strategy.

from IM Tips And Tricks https://searchenginewatch.com/2017/07/24/5-essential-aspects-of-technical-seo-you-cannot-neglect/ from Rising Phoenix SEO https://risingphxseo.tumblr.com/post/163366973015

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anything-advice-blog · 7 years

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Submission

need advice

Hi, so my boyfriend broke up with me 2 months ago. We were in a LDR and were together for 2 years. Back in june we were having problems right before me leaving to visit him for the summer, out of the blue he called me one day and he told me he didn’t love me anymore like weeks before leaving but through that he will tell me one day he did love me and he wanted me to go and other days he will ignore me and just very confusing behaviour. I decided to go and see how things went and if anything I had other friends around I could stay with. When we saw each other of course everything was different and he said he was happy and he wanted to be with me and he loved me. I did suggest a couple of times that we should go to her therapist together but he said he didn’t think there was a problem and that he was happy. I stopped insisting. He was still going because he has been very unhappy with his life and he is just going through that phase of not knowing what to do after school.

After summer he went back to the states since he is finishing high school and I went back to my home country. After like a week or two he started acting very weird, he will take very long to reply and his replies were very strange and short. When we spoke through facetime he will seem very off and stuff, so I asked and insisted what was wrong and he told me that he didn’t know what he wanted and he was very confused and that he will try but he didn’t know how he felt and that. After a week of that I did saw it coming a bit, he broke up with me. He said he wanted to concentrate in school and that he didn’t feel a spark but if I was there with him it would work, one time he told me he wanted to be with other people another time he told me he wanted to be single, but he said he still wanted me to support him and be part of his life. I said then I didn’t want to speak for like a month because there was too much going on. While that was going on I spoke to some friends from his school because I was having suspicions that there might be some other girl, they told me that there was another person but that there was nothing serious going between them yet, of course I was heart broken, they went to homecoming togeteher. After 3 weeks he spoke to me because he was worried about me because of something that was going o with my country I replied but just about that topic. When the month was up I started talking to him very casually about things and sometimes he will reply carelessly and other times he will ask me things.

One day that we were speaking he asked if I wanted to talk about the topic, he seemed very eager and sad, I was not really ready so I put it off for like another week. Then I spoke to him and we spoke through facetime on the halloween weekend. Through that he seemed careless again kind of, he knew I had spoken to his friends and I of course I asked a lot about this girl and told him how he had emotionally cheated because of course he had flirted before with her to invite her to homecoming a week after breaking up with me. He said that nothing had happened and that “she broke his heart” cause apparently he wanted to have something with her but she told him she wanted to concentrate getting into college and she didn’t want to spend the whole year with one person, etc. Kind of hypocritical since he told me kind of the same when he broke up with me.

What I am having a lot of anger and trouble with is that he told me he wants to be in a relationship, like really? after 2 years of being together and we had already been planning to be together next year, just after a month of him breaking up with me he is already after other girls. But he keeps telling me he wants to be part of my life and that he wants to support me but he hasn’t spoke to me for about 2 weeks now and I dont want to be dog chasing him. It feels like he really doesn’t give a shit and just tells me things for me to feel better. What should I do? Should I call him on his bullshit? Should I not talk to him at all? Is there something I need to hear? Im just tired of suffering.

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Hello there love!

Like everything in this world, you have a choice to do what you feel is right. From what I’m getting from the story, is that you’re tired of all this needless drama. Judging from what you’ve told me, it seems he’s pretty confused himself, and he seems to have commitment issues for the time being. So you have a pretty wide range of options at this point. Since he’s waiting for your move, you have the upper hand on where you want to lead this relationship. Whether you want to keep him as a friend, maybe give him another chance, it’s really all up to you.

Being in Long Distance Relationships are difficult. Especially when you have to invest a lot of time and trust into the other. So, as soon as that trust starts to crack, if both parties don’t try to quickly repair it, the relationship will eventually break. Both parties also have to constantly work together. If even one person slacks off, and tries to pick it up later, it would be long too late. On that note, if he’s consistently hurting you by being cold and nonchalant about your feelings, before long it’s clear that you won’t take it. So here, if he’s constantly being confusing and being hot and cold, you have the choice to either not take it, and tell him straight up that you aren’t willing to play the waiting game blindly, or if you still believe there are fragments that can be picked up, you can continue to be with him. However, be wary of both options as both have their repercussions. If you choose to tell him that you won’t handle his games, it means that you are planning to agree to the prior agreement of breaking up and just staying as friends or strangers. If you plan to wait for him, you have the chance of being hurt even more, and there’s the chance that he won’t change his ways that you dislike, and you would always be receiving second-hand information around those who are mutual friends.

As for him, despite claiming that he really wants you to be his girlfriend, he has eyes for other people. Unless you’re okay with that, I don’t think it’s a very healthy relationship. Of course, these things happen, but if he refuses to change that’s a different story. Trust is a fundamental building block of a relationship. If you can’t even afford to give him that and/or he breaks it, it might be best to step back for awhile.

Also, from your story, it might be a good idea to take time off from each other. He’s clearly very confused, and you’re very tired of all his confusion. During that time, try to see what he’s trying to say, and more importantly, if you see that there’s a chance between you two. Different couples want different things in their s/o, and it’s no different for you two. See if being with him is really worth investing. Try to see if it’s him that changed, or if you’re the one changing for the better. Is there a reason why you fell for him? Does that reason still uphold? Is there traits that you still like about him? Have they disappeared? Why did you begin to date him? Is that still prominent enough for you to stay with/ leave him? These are questions that you should be asking yourself. If the cons outweigh the pros, than perhaps consider just being friends. Even though it’s true that feeling outweighs logic, you still have to look out for yourself, and remember to care for your wellbeing as well.

It’s great that your mutual friends are trying to help out, however if there are too many people involved, they naturally want to help, and most of the time, it makes the drama bigger. People can mishear things, over exaggerate, or even choose sides. It’s better to find someone who doesn’t have anything against either parties to act as a mediator, or as mutual messenger (can’t say they’ll enjoy being a messenger). But, try not to include others, as this can actually be detrimental than advantageous. Many friendships have broken apart or ended up fighting because things like this happen.

Whatever you choose to do, try to be the bigger person. This isn’t meant as an insult, it’s more of a recommendation. Try not to be too resentful of his actions, and even though you’re hurt, try not to inflict reciprocating emotional or physical pain. Ultimately, by learning to walk away, or confront your issues passively and calmly, not only shows what kind of person you are, but what kind of person you will become. By dealing with this in a classy way, it will show him what he’s missed out on, what he’s fallen for, or how lucky is.

~Ella ʕ•ᴥ•ʔ

#ella #ldr #relationship #boyfriend #dating #girlfriend #cheating #homecoming #27.04.2017 #drama #friendships #bottom of the inbox #submission

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