The interwebs is filled with a lot of provocative, well-written and thoughtful blogs. And happily, (for me) mom blogs have been a big part of the growth of blogs while furthering a thoughtful discussion of modern parenting.

Parenting blogs have been predominantly female for the last five years, but as the role of dads change, dad bloggers have been a growing force online.

When I was growing up, the gossip network in my neighbourhood was legendary: about five minutes after I received an award, or, more likely, did something spectacularly stupid, the phone would be ringing, neighbours would be shouting across the yard, it felt like my business was everyone's business.

Multiply that by about a million and you have our kids' experience. The neighbourhood of our youth is now the Internet, and no sooner have our kids won an award; or, more likely, peed in their pants and the news is out there straight from our fingertips (or thumbs) on Facebook, Twitter and blogs.

Beyonce has definitely met her match in vlogger Nineteen Percent. The vlogger (video+blogger) breaks down Beyonce's newest song Run the World (Girls) refuting the message by highlighting the state of women's rights across the world and she does it with sarcasm and wit.

It is five minutes worth watching. She even calls out Beyonce's husband Jay-Z.

Sitting in the back of my lecture hall, I am half-listening to my poli-sci 101 class. My professor poses the question: "Rationally, we know that our vote doesn't make a difference, so why do it?"

The kid in front of me, the kind of guy that no one takes seriously and who we all wonder how he got into this university, jumps out of his chair and yells, "You have to buy a ticket to win!"

I wonder if any of my kids' teachers have secret blogs where they talk about my kids. I probably wouldn't want to read them because the truth is if they don't think my kids are superstars, I don't really want to know.

Natalie Munroe is a teacher in a Pennsylvania middle school and when she wrote on her blog, she really let it fly. She called her students: "rude, disengaged whiners" and admitted to hating a student. Even though she only used her first name and never mentioned her school, she got found out by her students and the administration. She was promptly suspended with pay and escorted out of the school.

Hours later, the media was at her front door and she has been defending her actions at every turn. Her readership has gone from seven people to tens of thousands. And despite the media attention, she is not backing down from her words, nor her right to blog. 

There are things that I don't write about in this space. Things that I can't tell even my closest friends. They are the fleeting thoughts, little confessions about being a mom and a wife that usually disappear in an instant. I know you have them too.

Parenting and marriage aren't easy states to live in, we make mistakes, we hurt people and we think hurtful things. Sometimes we only need to read someone else's dark thoughts to feel a little less alone, sometimes confessing our sins makes the load a little lighter,

The Internet has become our online confessional booth, so much so that there is now an "App for that". But if you don't have an iPhone, there are numerous anonymous sites that allow you to unload your darkest feelings and thoughts in the hopes that you will feel a little better, a little more able to carry on through the day.

People's confessions are a reflection of the tiny and large emotions that we carry through our day. Some confessions are about the little things: how a wife hates her husband's morning breath, in others you can hear the betrayal, the anger and the confusion. Mothers saying how they feel alone, or favour one child, or feel bad because they forgot to pack their kids lunch.

So where can you go if you want confess a bad wife or bad mom moment?

Jessica wanted to reach out and connect with other breastfeeding moms. She felt after her experiencing nursing five girls she had some wisdom to share and knew that nursing women often need to connect and exchange stories. To make it easier, she started a Leaky B@@b Facebook page as an offshoot of her blog, The Leaky B@@b. The Facebook community grew beyond her expectations to approximately 16,000 active monthly users, affectionately called "Leakies".

But then when she woke up on January 2, the community was gone, erased by Facebook for violation Terms of Service.

It sounds like hyperbole to say that my life has been changed by blogs and blogging. Perhaps enriched is the best way to say it – I have learned and been challenged by the incredible roster of good writing out there that I am going to leave you this long weekend (the first or the last) of the year.

I know some of the writers behind some of these blogs, others I met at blogging conferences and others I have never met, and wouldn’t recognize walking down the street even though I have read their intimate words.

I was going to organize them into categories like: passion, knowledge, laughs but the best bloggers have all of that in almost every post. So here is who I read regularly (in no particular order).

It’s my blogiversary. You didn’t know that word existed did you? It means that I have been blogging here at Embrace the Chaos for one year – which means I have written 252 posts about my life, kids and my perspective on parenting.

If you  have been reading for a year then congratulations to you, I guess you have a penchant for typos, overuse of brackets and the word and, as well as some half-baked ideas, judgments, wisecracks and once in a while a thoughtful approach to the crazy world of parenting.

When I sat down in October of last year to write my first blog I was completely overwhelmed with the idea of writing five days of week, I wasn’t sure if I could do it. But in the past year I blogged through swine flu, lice (three times!)and stitches, big decisions and small ones. I judged people, and was judged, I opened up about my sex life, my marriage, my family and my kids. And I learned a lot in the process about writing, about parenting and about myself.

Some lessons from a one-year blogger:

Sometimes it feels like our kids are speaking a different language, or should I say, texting a different language? Because the way they communicate with each other is totally different than what we did at their age.

My son is 10, he is begging us for a phone, but not a “lame” phone a smartphone. So far we haven’t given in but I know my husband is weakening and even I know that by Grade 6 he will have (or should I say lose) a phone.

Most of us parents are making it up as we go along: the screentime rules; the Internet monitoring; the social media hovering. When it comes to media we are trying to play catch-up with our kids all the time. Which is a bit ironic since we feel that we should be protecting our kids from the very media that they understand better than us. (My husband will want to interject here and say that he understands it just fine.)