Mommy Blogs

Mommy Blogs
Source: http://bx.businessweek.com/mommy-blogs/

Mommy blogs are increasingly becoming one of the more powerful genres of blogging on the Web. With companies courting mom bloggers for endorsements on everything from shampoo to family vacations, it's no wonder mom blogging is growing by leaps and bounds and shows no signs of slowing.

Mommy Blogs is part of Business Exchange, suggested by Jennifer James. This topic contains 38 news and 22 blog items. Read updated news, blogs, and resources about Mommy Blogs. Find user-submitted articles and comments on Mommy Blogs from like-minded professionals. less

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My Favorite Mommy (and Daddy) Blogs
Source: http://parenting.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/12/18/my-favorite-sites/?pagemode=print
December 18, 2008, 8:43 am
By Lisa Belkin

This is the 100th post I have written for Motherlode.

To celebrate, I thought I’d introduce you to some of the blogs and Web sites I visit daily, places where smart, eloquent people are sharing wisdom about parenting. This list is by no means complete. And it grows daily. So keep sending me suggestions and I will write about new-found gems every once in a while.

My web trawling falls into three categories. There are service sites, places like iVillage, Motherhood Later Rather Than Sooner (a resource for older mothers), UrbanBaby, BabyCenter, The Juggle (the life/work balance blog at the Wall Street Journal), OnParenting (the parenting blog at the Washington Post) and Please Stop the Roller Coaster (for the parents of teens) — all of which are intended to be newsy and informative.

There are blogs that showcase a variety of essayists — among my favorites are Babble (particularly the essay section), Mommy Track’d and the Moms Blog (which is subdivided into such destinations as NYC Moms, 50 Something Moms, and Deep South Moms).

And, finally, there are the personal blogs — one parent, chronicling his or her life, and teaching the rest of us in the process.

A few are mega-sites, places that thousands of other readers have discovered:
Ree Drummond’s Pioneer Woman, where she writes about the life of a city girl who married a cowboy and now raises four children on a cattle ranch (a very large, profitable cattle ranch, but still, it’s a ranch…).

Heather Armstrong’s Dooce, where she’s spent four years telling us about raising her daughter, Leta, and very photogenic dog, Chuck, (and, more recently, puppy Coco), and where lately the talk has been of morning sickness and her fear of the return of the postpartum depression that led to her hospitalization after Leta was born.
And Stephanie Klein’s Greek Tragedy, which started out, eons ago, as her way to get over a very messy divorce, and chronicled her new marriage and the arrival of her twins (who came so early and so quickly that her husband “held her hand” by phone from 1,500 miles away).

A few are somewhat less trafficked:

I need a daily dose of Mama Is, by cartoonist Heather Cushman-Dowdee. She has been the artist behind Hathor the Cow Goddess for years, and this summer, in a fit of pique over news that women give up on breastfeeding too early, she came out from behind her Hathor “mask” and created this new blog — which supports natural parenting, in a nonpreachy, downright funny way.

Another place to get a smile is Because I Said So, where Dawn Meehan manages to keep a sense of humor while raising six children outside of Chicago.

Then there are the sad tales, places I return to every day, to make sure strangers who I have come to care about as friends, are doing O.K. I hesitated before listing so many of them here, for fear of skewing a look at parenting toward the parts that are tragic, but sites like these are the work of parents who know well what matters and what can be let go. It’s good for all of us to be reminded of that.

There’s Life with Hannah and Lily , which was given its title before little Hannah drowned during a family outing. Her mother Rachel’s voice has healed and strengthened in the hundreds of posts she’s written since then, and her little sister, Lily, is growing up fast.

There’s Matt, Liz and Madeline, which Matt Logelin began as a way of spreading the news of his daughter’s birth eight months ago, but which has become a chronicle of raising Madeline alone after Liz died suddenly, the day after she become a mom.

There Dear Henry, where Allen Goldberg still writes letters to his son, who died of a genetic illness at the age of 7, six years ago. (Technically Allen is not a stranger to me — I came to know his family well when I wrote a magazine piece about Henry’s fight, and you will be able to hear from him yourself later today when he writes a guest blog here on Motherlode.)

And there’s Crash Course Widow, where Candice is still reeling from the sudden death of her high-school sweetheart and husband of less than two years, in a bike race accident back in 2005. She is using her blog to cope with her grief, and to keep memories of Daddy alive for her daughter, Anna, who was less than a year old when her father died.

To end on an upbeat note, the last blog I will mention here doesn’t really fall under the category of parenting, since the “child” in question is a coyote. Shreve Stockton has been raising Charlie since he was ten days old, and his parents were shot because they were a threat to local Wyoming sheep. She puts a new photo up on The Daily Coyote every day, so I have watched Charlie grow as a coyote over the past year, and Shreve grow as his “mother”. He has “siblings” too — Eli the cat and Chloe the dog.

Where do you get advice, insight and inspiration on the Web? I am always looking for new places to explore, so send them along in the comments and I will head on over.