Simplemom.net tells me I should narrow down my daily blog intake to a healthy amount, citing 75 as a bit much (then what is 104?). They say it will help me with my time management. Yeah… I just don’t see that happening anytime soon. I admit, my Bloglines runneth over, but what if I miss a day of Dooce or DaddyTypes? What if one clever Bossy-ism slips past my screen? What if I miss a Crafty Crow suggestion of some wonderful art project in all of their slightly super saturated photojournalistic glory? You know, the ones you try with your child that leave you frustrated to tears with a wailing eight month old on one hip and a toddler, a chair and two walls covered in paint, chalk, marker and a pint of sand. The fun ones.

I love blogs like House on Hill Road, Sycamore Stirrings and Sugar City Journal, they sit in a folder I reserve for particularly guilt-driven days when I want nothing more than to see smiling children in perfectly primed, coordinated, freshly bleached whites. I close my eyes and pretend for a minute that it is my house (the same with my “House Fodder” folder, not so much parent based…minus ohdeedoh…but equally as gluttonous).

I’m your normal stay at home mom of two (thing one: 29 months, thing two: 8 months). We practice frugal living, urban homesteading, freegan tactics and at times deep, deep denial to make it through. Life isn’t nearly as perfect as a lot of SAHMs make it out to be. I have visions of sugar plums and that 1950’s house wife dancing through my head in the wee hours of the morning before I get woke up by the co-sleeping, attachment parented baby wiggling a diaper butt in my face and the toddler beginning her repetitive chant of “malk, malk, maaaaaalk” that starts my day.

I think I’m 25, but I still feel 19 (until nap time) and I swear college was just a few weeks ago. Where did the time go? How did I get…established? I left my career as an Art Director in a Publishing House to marry my husband and become a mommy, a job I wouldn’t trade for the world: because there are way too many people on the world and its hard enough trying to convince my husband of adding a third, let alone a couple billion. But it suits me, at times the walls close in and I need a good cup of tea to get me through (or coffee if the walls are really, really close). But all my credentials and all the talent in the world wouldn’t make me a better mother than my sense of humor, my survival gear and a garden hose (think about that one for a bit).