Confessions of a mommy blogger. By Catherine Newman

Sorry to post on top of Sadie's post today. Make sure you read hers too. I thought I'd share this article.

My friend got the magazine Wondertime in the mail and lo and behold there was an article in it about blogging that I stole from her blog! Here are some of the highlights.

"Blogging is narcissistic-and time-consuming. It gives strangers (not to mention the in-laws) ammunition for criticizing our parenting choices. And one day it could really mortify our kids. Here's why we do it anyway... You are not alone. If there's a single fact to take from the 70 million blogs that inhabit the Internet, it's this: Whoever you are-however thrilled or frantic, bored or despairing, buoyant or afflicted with love like an aching in your bones-someone our there understands. Especially if you're a mother."



"When I asked my readers to describe for me why, after finally getting their children to bed, they stay up half the night writing about them in blogs of their own-or, crazier still, reading about other people's children in their blogs-they described this longing for connection: "I read blogs to feel I'm part of something larger, a whole world of other women raising children on this crazy, spinning planet." "Being a parent is so Frustratingly difficult and blindingly beautiful at the same time. Blogs remind me to celebrate the beautiful and that I'm not alone in the difficult."

"Blogging is the underbelly of scrapbooking. In the scrapbook version of my summer vacation, I would paste together a sunny collage of sea and sand and smiling kids. In the blog version, I might be more inclined to mention the steaming beach Port-A-John, where the final quarter of Birdy's sandwich ended up tumbling into the reeking blackness. If scrapbooking is the urge to put it all together, blogging might be the urge to take it all apart. Blogging might not make life tidier, but it keeps life in your memory, and keeps it real."

Comments are like Christmas! She says:

"I've checked for comments as obsessively as I once stuck my eighth grade hand into the echoing hollows of our mailbox. (Anything for me? A letter from Shaun Cassidy detailing his undying love?)
Heehee!

"...I'm always seeing our family's life as a funny story I could tell, the question that troubles me is, am I really paying attention? Sometimes I feel like on of those tourists arguing about the camcorder while Niagara crashes down around them in frenetic blue wonder."
"The anonymous author of the blog Bub and Pie puts it: I go through the day in a kind of 'compose post' mode, where I'm actively selecting words to describe my children-their beauty, their quirkiness, their inner lives-and that process helps me to see them, to be mindful of who they are." Writing gives me a way to step back from my life and really see it. To watch my kids and feel the gratitude flood through my veins."


I thought this was a cute article and I totally love the part about blogs being the underbelly of scrapbooking. Hope you enjoyed it.