Doodaddy

I cry a lot. I am one of those crying people. See anything touching today? Chances are, it would make me cry.

Putting Boobaby down for her nap, I often watch the ol’ iPod. (I find the distraction keeps me from trying to engage with her.) I was watching one of the free Sesame Street specials you can download from iTunes. (You may remember how I bawled when Elmo got scared by a fire.) In this one, Elmo’s dad was going off to serve “somewhere” (specific wars not mentioned, thankfully) for “a long time.” Well, needless to say, I was a complete wreck again, this time crying to the point of the wet sobs and startling poor Boobaby until I got it under control.

My crying is not neurochemical, thankfully (and there but for the grace of someone go we all). I always have a reason to cry, albeit a little thin: a long distance phone commercial, say. More often than not, I cry for joy because I have a happy, healthy baby and a wonderful life in which I can (mostly) care for her the way I’d like.

In fact, I firmly believe I cry a lot because I think a lot, about how lucky I am, about how scary the world is, about how I could do more to make it less scary. I think about the future and the past but mostly I think in the present.

So where did all this thinking get me today? Well, it got me an award.

Mood Swinging Mommy tagged me for a Thinking Blogger Award, for which I’m very grateful. Although it strikes me that bloggers do a fair bit of recognizing of one another already, I do love the recognition and there are a few of my fellow-bloggers that really do make me think a lot. And since part of the deal is that when one is tagged, one passes on the tag to five other blogs, here I go.

• Greeblemonkey. One of my favorite blogs. Having a child can make it hard to retain who you are yourself, and I think Aimee is a shining example of how to be a great parent and still her own person at the same time. As an added bonus, she’s an incredible photographer: blog is beautiful.
• Cry it out: Adventures of a stay-at-home dad. This is Mike Adamick’s blog; he’s a journalist and now stay-at-home dad. His Emme is roughly the same age as my Boobaby, so I find that he puts into words a lot of the things I’m feeling, although quite a bit better than I do. (He wrote about Stay-at-Home Guilt the very day I was searching for that very concept.)
• Blogs Are Stupid. Another thoughtful mom, “Blog Antagonist” is really nuanced and evocative when writing about her school-aged kid. She’s also a reader, which I’m down with.
• Mandajuice. Amanda is really honest about the struggles and joys of at-home parenthood, especially as someone who really enjoyed her professional life. Definitely in my top 5.

I know this isn’t just a parent thing, by the way, but I’m mostly a parent-blog-reader. Here’s a non-parent blog to round it out.

• I did not know that yesterday. How things work, how things came to be, and Who invented the ice cream cone. Very fun and a quick read.

If you’re interested in the whole Thinking Blogger thing, here’s a link to the original post.