Maybe I’m more comfortable with toddlers than infants, so I have less need to blog about the mysteries. Sophie is still fascinatingly complicated: we’re in napping war right now (she won’t nap, but she will get moodily exhausted without sleep, so it’s a struggle), and we’re also working on using her nice words instead of tantrum-screams — but I used to babysit toddlers, so I don’t find any of this as novel or as interesting or as blog-worthy, I guess.
Maybe Sophie’s stories are already starting to feel like her own stories and not mine to blog about here. “I didn’t wake the kids up today!” she announces gleefully, each daycare day that passes without her disturbing the sleep of her napping friends. She’s very proud of this accomplishment. The other story she likes to tell is that I introduced her — a bit prematurely — to internet shopping. “The mailman is going to bring my boots,” she keeps saying. She’s wonderful, really, and that doesn’t make for much of a blog post.
Maybe I’m just distracted with academic work, and yoga, and parenting, and life.
Maybe, oddly, the 140 characters of facebook status-updates have come to feel like enough public announcement of my life, so I don’t write longer stories here.
Maybe my best stories come out on my friends’ blogs.
Or maybe I’m extra-cautious, because the friend I blogged about here has refused to phone me since that blog post. Sophie asks about that friend nearly daily. She invented an invisible M, along with M’s mom T, who tend to knock on our door a lot. Sometimes, M’s dad also arrives, invisibly, at our house in Sophie’s fantasies. It’s been almost four months, which is an eternity in toddler-time, but Sophie keeps begging to see M. Really, M’s mom was lax about returning our calls before that blog-post, while M herself had spent months ignoring Sophie and hurting her feelings — but, still, it disturbs me that by posting that Sophie’s favorite person was independent, I apparently hurt that person’s feelings so much that she won’t talk to me any more.
Really, I don’t know why I haven’t blogged in a while. I don’t want to neglect you, my readers.
Elaine's blog 
yeah, i know what you mean. even when i blog these days, often i’m tossing up something superficial (something i never see you do! ah, the difference between the thoughtful academic and the self-obsessed journalist). it happens in fits and starts. and when you get a negative reaction, well — i won’t comment except to say i’m really sorry that happened. i also COMPLETELY related to the infant v. toddler thing, and oh my, wait til sophie is in third grade; you will have THE BEST TIME. it’s all good — it’s just that it gets better and better. for me, anyway, but i never was an infant type. floppy necks make me nervous. not that we don’t all have floppy necks, some days. see you on facebook!
Amy, you’re too kind. I think one of the things about momblogging is that we’re always blogging about what others may find superficial. We think that naps and necks are profound, important, fascinating, mysterious, amusing, worth talking about — they are, really — but most of the non-parenting world (and even many parents) probably don’t see the joy in all these tiny moments. You know this better than I, I suspect, because you’re the one who teaches Moms Who Write.
I am looking forward to 3rd grade. I know just what you mean. It’s odd how similar we are.