Back to Blogging

I haven't blogged since 2009, when I moved from Germany to North Carolina. Back then my blog was a way to write about life abroad, keep my family and friends abreast of my expat existence, and kill some time as I tried to illegally download American television shows. It was fun, and, moreover, easy.  When I started the blog in 2008, I didn't feel the need to justify why I was writing; I moved to another country and it was just something silly to do.  But now there are mommy blogs and cooking blogs, fashion blogs and lifestyle blogs, blogs that get people book deals and TV shows,  etc. According to an email that I just got, Gwyneth Paltrow has been blogging for five years! My point is, it feels much scarier to be dipping my toe into the proverbial Internet waters. I don't recall ever worrying if I had something novel to add to the cacophony of the web back in 2008. I was just impressed with myself when I figured out how to hyperlink text.

In the five years since I last blogged, I went to gradate school, bought a house and survived the first (and second, third, and fourth) years of marriage. I also had a baby.  Ingrid Rosemary joined us last August, and for the last 13 months, I've been a work-from-home mom. It's only been five years, but motherhood and married life is a time warp.  Sometimes it feels like it's been a whole century.

When Ingrid was five months old, I was still giving her a bath in her baby bathtub.  I loved her tub; she looked like Cleopatra floating down the Nile in it.  She sat in a reclined position, and at five months had the sort of luxurious rolls of inner thigh fat only an ancient monarch could have.  I was rinsing her hair and she was splashing me when I started crying.  Erik came in and I explained that I was so so so sad, because 100 years wouldn't be enough time with this girl. It all goes much too fast, even on the days when you look at the clock and realize it's only 1 pm, and she won't nap, and you can't legally put her to bed until at least 7, and if you have to read "Brown Bear, Brown Bear" one more time you might start day drinking. Even those days end too quickly. So, like roughly 15 million other American moms, I'm starting a blog so I can make time go a little slower on some days, and faster on others.