Addicted to Blogs

Yes, it's sad, but true that I have a blog addiction. It could be because it's one thing I can do while holding two babies (yes, America does have talent), but it seems I could take up hours daily roaming from one blog to another. Am I catching up on all the latest and greatest in my dear friends lives who take the time to update their family blogs? Oh no. My addiction started with craft blogs, I enjoyed dreaming of all the crafts that I could do if I could ever walk away from my computer. But in the past several months, I adopted a new favorite - Mommy blogs. Who knew there was such a category? One good thing has come of this. I'm inspired to blog more (no, that is not a New Year's resolution - I refuse to make those). For those of you that keep your blog up to date that are shaking your heads at me, I'd like to point out, I'm not as bad as an unnamed friend whose last post was Dec 21, 2008 - and that was a post about Thanksgiving. (I guess FB has replaced her blog - boo).

So here are my top two Mommy blogs (both of them from Babble's list of top mommybloggers). I feel like both of these bloggers have hit my parenting style (or lack thereof) on the head. I have literally "laughed out loud" several times while reading these blogs, they're just so confessional and humorous in their manner.

1. Dooce.com

from Babble: In Heather Armstrong's words, "The chaos in our house is unreal." On Dooce, Armstrong channels that chaos through brutally honest, sardonic blog posts generating millions of visitors. Blending her biting wit with photos worthy of forwarding and an "all's fair" policy, Dooce has defined the mommy blogosphere since 2001. Along with raking in enough cashola to be the sole breadwinner, she's earned awards for Best American Blog, Best Design ed Blog, Best Writing for a Blog, Weblog of the Year and, in 2008, the Weblog's Lifetime Achievement award. In between blogging, Armstrong wrote the bestselling book It Sucked and then I Cried about her post-partum depression.

Armstrong's cross-over to the lush blog-only lifestyle was not voluntary. Now the stuff of legend, she was fired from her job after her merciless musings about her employer and her coworkers surfaced. She became what is now referred to as "dooced" — let go for negative job ramblings on the web.

2. Mom-101
from Babble:

One of Nielsen's 50 Power Moms and Forbes' Top 10 Mommy 'Hood Gurus, publisher/editor-in-chief of Cool Mom Picks, Brooklyn Heights-based Liz Gumbinner might look like another trendy blogging mama, but as she commented to the New York Post: "I'm kind of tired of the 'indie hipster smirking at the world around you' thing . . . cynicism has its place when you're, like, 20 and raging against the world, but once you become a parent, I think you owe your kids a little better than that."

Gumbinner's famous for her writing on Mom 101 about the sanctimommy trend; in her blog post she describes a particular breed of judgmental mom: "She has read every baby book, and has decided that her expert of choice is the expert and that heeding any other parenting theories is akin to worshipping false idols." Gumbinner's objectives — to put people at ease, not channel sanctimommy, and to post (often loudy) "I AM NOT READY FOR THIS" about new parenting trials — make for a lively read.