When I was pregnant the first time and then a new mom and everything was fresh and scary, I had much more free time and spent it scouring the parenting boards and websites. In my surfing, I ran into a lady sharing her life in a blog called Bringing Up Ben & Birdy. This was 2004 and I didn't really know what a blog was. I was fascinated by this glimpse into another parent's life and spent so much time reading her posts that I felt as if I knew her and her family.

But time passed and my life got busier. Web development stole the time I used to spend reading about parenting and I drifted away from Ben and Birdy. I hadn't really given the blog any thought in ages until recently, when a strange turn lead me back into the world of "mommyblogging".

It started with Twitter. I'd heard of Twitter for some time but it always seemed a little silly to me. Then, about a month ago, I decided to give it a whirl and found it quirky and fun. At first, I filled my follows up with Drupal folks. But, then, a couple weeks ago, I decided to use the search to see if there were any local folks on there. If you haven't guessed from this site, I've got a thing with chatting with local people on the net. There weren't many, and most I found hadn't updated in ages if at all. But I found a few interesting folks to follow so it was worth the search.

The most interesting of these is Kate Olson. She's a parent, a teacher, a blogger, and just generally a fascinating person. I've been reading her blog and learning about the world of education from a different perspective. So what does this have to do with mommyblogging? Well not long ago she mentioned she was starting a new site, a "mommy blog". I was intrigued. I thought back to Ben and Birdy and wondered if it was something like that. While there were a few others besides B&B on Babycenter, I had thought it was a fairly rare thing for someone to share their life like that outside of a family website, and didn't think there were many. I couldn't have been more wrong. Fast forward to the debut of This Mommy Gig on Mother's Day. Kate has done a wonderful job of bringing together interesting writers and this will be on my "must read" list for sure. But more than just creating a great site, she's opened my eyes to a whole world I didn't realize existed. On the sidebar is a section called "Ladies to read". So I went to read and found that "mommyblogging" is huge! There are so many sites out there with mothers baring their souls and sharing their lives. I was just floored. I've spent so long on the tech sites and now there's this whole other section of the web that I've somehow managed to miss, other than my brief introduction years ago. Now the question is, where am I going to get more hours in the day to read all of this?! LOL

So, if you're a mom, want to be a mom, or just are interested in moms, go check out This Mommy Gig. You won't be sorry.