I don't just blog about fleas and rotten meat. Hello. Take II

My friend called me yesterday. She’s the one who gave me the cookbook, so I thought she was calling about my meat explosion.

I was right.

After the mockery she said, “I like your blog, but you don’t really talk about being a mom that much.” I must have sounded hurt because she immediately backpedaled. “What I mean is, I wouldn’t really call it a mom blog. You write about work a lot. And Chuck. And Mulletville. And fleas. And other stuff, too.”

The conversation ended there because Junior wanted to get out of the tub and I didn’t want to wrestle a slippery toddler with a phone crooked in my neck, but I’ve been thinking a lot about what she said.

Avoiding the obvious—which is that the life of a mom need not be relegated to parenting issues alone—part of me wondered if I’d have more to say about being a mother if I didn’t work full-time. That made me a little sad. I’m home by 4:30, so I have a nice chunk of time with Junior at night, but my posts aren’t full of anecdotes about my kid because, well, I’m not with my kid all the time.

But even if I were, Junior isn’t entertaining 24-7. Sure, he held up plastic hangers to his ears last night and shouted, “I’m a moose!” but you’re not Junior’s grandmother; you probably don’t want to hear about every cute thing he does.

Another part of me tried to remember if my intention from the get-go was to be a mom blogger. I think it was. I think when I first started this blog I fancied myself a valuable resource for fellow moms. Clearly, I was drunk when I envisioned that.

The more I thought about the whole “You’re not really a mom blogger” comment, the more I realized I’ve kind of been avoiding the mom issue, and that my meatloaf is a fitting picture for why. It illustrates what my brain sees lately in the blogosphere: momsplosion.

Lately, there are so many women blogging about what it means to be a mom that my brain cells can’t synthesize it all. There are blogs of helicopter moms, supermoms, entrepreneurial moms, kayaking moms, product-reviewer moms, WOHMs, SAHMs, WOOHs, juggling moms, green moms, hybrid moms, stepmoms, same-sex moms and moms with two vaginas.

Then there are moms blogging about the helicopter moms, supermoms, entrepreneurial moms, kayaking moms, product-reviewer moms, WOHMs, SAHMs, WAHMs, juggling moms, green moms, hybrid moms, stepmoms, same-sex moms and moms with two vaginas.

And we haven’t even gotten to the dad blogs! (Had I known Chuck was so en vogue as a stay-at-home dad, I would have gotten his Viking-Ghostbusting-Stay-at-Home-Dad in the Buff calendar ready a whole year earlier.)

My point is that there are parents everywhere, and they are blogging about everything. A few years ago, blog tracker Technorati estimated there were about 8,500 blogs where parents were writing about their kids. That’s before the mom/dadsplosion. Right now, there are probably 657,836,098,747,647 blogs where parents are writing about their kids.

I've connected with some of them—like .0092%—and I love it. I really do. But some days, the sheer volume of words makes me feel like reaching for the Massengill. Do we honestly have that much to say about parenting? Do you ever feel that we’re saturating the blogosphere with our parental introspection? Do you think by now we might have covered everything?

I do. Some days I envision the parental blogosphere as the Great Oz. And I picture a mom—or dad—hitting “publish” on her—or his—blog post and the Great Oz receiving this notification:



Yah, the Great Oz uses a Mac. Of course he does.