All This Because Jude Wouldn't Nap!

Well, it's been two weeks since the craziness began, which is like two years in internet time. FACT: Over 72 hours of video are uploaded to YouTube per MINUTE. Now consider that most YouTube clips are less than a minute long; that's hundreds of thousands of videos per hour hour uploaded for anyone in the world to watch (or not).

Basically, the odd's of a video going "viral" are about the same as winning the lottery. There are billions of videos online, some make you laugh, some make you think, and others make you squirm, but it's pretty rare for a home video like the one we took to get the immediate exposure it did. What we're saying is; this was all pretty cool.

The timeline goes like this:

Sunday, February 17th: We shot the video while sitting on our couch. Jude wasn't in the mood for a nap that day, but we were letting him have some quiet time. I opened the monitor app on our iPad, saw him take a nose dive into the mattress and immediately snatched the phone out of Ashleigh's hand and started recording. I posted the video to YouTube later that night.

Saturday, February 23rd: Six days have passed, and our video has the typical number of views we normally get; about 100.  Except this morning I check YouTube and see we have 7000. What is going on? I googled the video and see that it is in the top 20 on Reddit, a website that has a continuous stream of what is "hot" on the internet and gets A LOT of traffic.

Sunday, February 24th: By the end of the day the video will have about 50,000 views. Absolutely stunning and we can't understand how/why it's getting all this exposure. We Google the video and see that the HUFFINGTON POST has put it on the front page of their Comedy section. Amazing.

Monday, February 25th: The day before we leave for our Cozumel vacation. I check the video and see that someone has said that they saw it on FOX NEWS. We check the website and sure enough, there is the Fox News morning show, chatting about our Jude! By the end of the day the video is over 100,000 views.

Tuesday, February 26th: We get up bright and early and leave for Cozumel. While we're sitting on the tarmac of the airport, waiting to fly to sunny Mexico we get a request for Jude's video to be on the Today Show. Sure!

Wednesday, February 27th: Jude's on the TODAY SHOW! (you can hear Al Roker get a good belly laugh while he watches the clip). By now he's been on dozens of local news shows, and his video has been posted to dozens of websites. There are over 1,000,000 views and that is growing fast. We get an email from Today's Mother section wanting a short email INTERVIEW. We're trying to enjoy our vacation but still can't believe all this exposure.

The rest of that week flew by, we came home, worn out fro m the trip and tried to let it all sink in. The video was on the front page of Yahoo! in the US and Japan! We've been home from Cozumel for a week now, and it's been two weeks since the video began going viral. At this minute, we are at 4,020,000 views. The video has been shown on multiple morning shows around the world, and been posted on dozens of reputable newspaper and news websites.

This is one of those things that will most likely never happen again, so we just enjoyed the heck out of it. The response has been mostly positive (although there are some people concerned for Jude's health because his "eyes are glowing". It's night vision folks, settle down).

We're not exactly sure why people responded so well to this clip. All we know is Jude keeps us laughing all the time, and now the world can see why. He might never have another viral video, but for one week he was the most famous two year old in the country, and that's pretty cool. We know this is just the first of many great things for our little boy, and as fast as he's growing up, it's truly great to have all this documentation of the time he was little and made the entire country laugh. We love you Jude!

Here are some links to the various coverage of Jude's video:

HUFFINGTON POST
The Daily Mail - UK
Buzz Patrol - US
News Cloud - Russia
USA TODAY - US
YAHOO! - US
THE STIR - US
COLLEGE HUMOR - US
THE TODAY SHOW - US
CBS NEWS - US
NEWS 247 - GREECE
PETIT PETIT GAMIN - FRANCE
7 SUR 7 - FRANCE

There's lots more out there, just Google "This Nap is NOT Happening"...