Parental Blogging

I recently went back to work full time, which includes a long-ish commute. I never seem to have organised anything good to read, so am left to reflect on recent blog posts, and comments therein.

There was a recent comment that made me wonder if perhaps one of our dear readers was chiding me about my past impatience with other people's small children & their feats of brilliance, given our predilection for bragadocious postings about our own kids.

What I decided on this particular point is 1) fair enough, but 2) a blog is a voluntary activity, whilst being captive in a small room listening to precocious poetry is still exasperating.

Anyway, this convoluted reflection then led to thoughts on 'what purpose our blog'? In my parallel existence, our blog would be full of clever links to clever things, full of witty bonmots, full of crazy ideas, full of Nilsen. And to be fair, many of Torbjorn's posts are pretty clever. But when the laptop is thrust onto my lap, the first thing to come to mind is the thing that is all consuming, my fullest of full-time jobs: parenting.

And there is where our gentle chiding reader has a point: I think in my past life (the one where I got sleep and read books with endnotes and multiple editors) I failed to understand just how all-encompassing this parenting gig is. It all starts so simply (drunkenly??)... and then you find yourself consumed with love/guilt, enchantment/resentment, jealousy/smugness, despair/profound hope. But most of all, joy. The pure unadulterated version thereof.

That joy, that's the killer. After a night of pacing the floor with a heavy ass but sick Lars, he greeted me this morning with a huge grin and the flapping up&down arms that mean "I'm so happy to see you but could you pick me up, QUICK?!?!" And what can you do but grin back and wipe the sand out of your eyes??

So that's what our blog has to cover: the joy. Yes, I am guilty of occasionally thinking mine are the best and the brightest. How do I explain, though, this task that is all consuming and has seemingly erased all evidence of my previous brain?? You've just gotta share that JOY, because the downside is full of the compromises, the shortchanges, the guilt of not doing any of it quite right.

Which is all to say that maybe someday my blog will be full of the carefully crafted prose that comes to me in fragments as I hike to work. But until then you get my kids, because a blog is worth it if it can make you smile.