Kate! Enough comparing yourself to other bloggers, already! And please don't go blonde (I know you wouldn't).

I'm sure you know this but I'll say it anyway: You have an informative, helpful site and your purpose is to be a resource for parents.

Remember the part in Heather Armstrong's interview where she said many days she hates it and desperately wants her life back? And she gets sometimes (400? cannot recall the number) hateful emails a day?

Her blog may be entertaining to read, but it doesn't actually substantively contribute to healthier families and activities the way this one does. She's just really, really witty. Okay, she probably makes way more income than the Sun provides, but hey, ya can't have everything :-)

Thanks for the kind words!

I will send you a list of other blonde bloggers if you like. There are lots of us out there with blogs, I have brown hair, but I am sure I can find someone else you could compare me to. A rough count of "mommybloggers" runs about 800.

We all probably have some similarities, but I assure you we have differences too.

This smacks of sour grapes and mean girls all at the same time.

Both Sweetney & Dooce are excellent writers, hip, mothers, have excellent taste in music, maintain visually engaging websites, been writing for ages in blog years, have large followings.

But the similarities are only evident with the most cursory of reads. Their lives, experiences, perspectives are completely different.

Sweetney is a veteran blogger and she is unique. She rocks.

I'd be curious to see how many blonde women there are in the US with a little girl and a dog and some tendency to swear. I'm thinking *at least* two of them are allowed to self-publish.

Now I'm going to go find other single brunette bloggers with nonfunctioning ovaries and caffeine addictions and tell them they are coooopying meeeee.

It suprises me that you would post something this uninformed and mean spirited. Sweetney and Dooce are completely different people and they have totally different voices. Sounds like you're jealous to me. (Heck I'M jealous of em too!)

Actually, no mean-girls spirit or sour grapes or anti-blond sentiment were intended! I sincerely meant only to poke fun at myself and my still-small-in-comparison blog, and to stimulate discussion about what's interesting about these writers. :)

Please don't be jealous. I find Dooce unbearable and Sweetney none too sweet. I like sweet, and thoughtful, and classy, and charming. That's why I visit HERE (even though I live in Boston)!

Sorry abuot the tone of my comment earlier. Heh. I was apparently projecting my own jealousy of their readership onto you. Heh. I really am Not A Mean Girl. .. Honest.

They are as alike as chalk and cheese.

They DO meet. Often. With about a thousand of the rest of us at conferences, panels, and online.

It always surprises me when mommy bloggers are compared when I don't see the same thing happening with, say, sports writers. And the longevity thing... it's like people are waiting for us to reach an expiration date, something you'd never think about with conventional journalism. Wait - I think we ARE conventional journalism now.

I understand the underlying message here, and I don't disagree, but it's not really fair if you haven't done your homework. Dooce is the only other woman I know who has been blogging as a mom as long as I have. There was a time when we all knew each other. And I'm an old fart, sitting here trying to shake the eerie resemblance between this and high school, where I was never part of a clique but was elected to Homecoming. Wha? On what criteria?

Superficial ones, it seems.

Mindy, I have been blogging about being a mom as long as you and Dooce and MelissaS and Fussy and lots of others. It would be impossible to find the origin of the species, and why even try?

The hair and dog comparison is funny because it is so ridiculous.

I see nothing ill-reported or malicious in Kate's entry, but plenty of mean-spirited spit and rage in return, both here and elsewhere. Are the comparisons not apt?

Plenty of bloggers, especially those starting out and even those who have been with it for a few years, have to wonder, briefly, what makes the it girls 'it.' To rise up in arms to 'defend' someone against this 'slight' is hasty at best.

JenB, you are so right. There is no Eve for this, and who cares if there was...

I did say I didn't know anyone else then, and didn't know that other people did it and I could have done with friends like you sooner! I think it was a year or two before I discovered everyone else. You know, when I first learned about that update-pingy thing and blogrolling. Back in the day.

Wow, I REALLY feel out of it. I don't have a blog. Okay, I did once for about 2 weeks, before I concluded it wasn't for me. But I used to read Dooce and a few other blogs before I got pregnant a couple years back. I think I might have been assessing what motherhood might feel like. Although I enjoyed reading Dooce a lot and agree that she is extremely witty and fun to read, I'll admit that what kept me coming back was that it felt a little like a train wreck you couldn't take your eyes off. Okay, train wreck is a little extreme, but there was this sort of unhinged aspect of her. She's like that crazy cool girl, that you always wished you could be, but you know that you're just sort of in control and ordinary. We all sort of keep that inner fasincation with people that are like us, yet so different. Reading blogs is not just community, but part voyeurism, too. I don't mean that negatively, mind you :-)

Wow, I didn't get anything negative from Kate's original post. I thought she was saying she liked both these bloggers.