Wait, there are how many mommy bloggers?

I'm reading a lot about blogging, for a piece I am writing. About mommy blogging, in particular, in the US and here in Switzerland. I came upon a number in neighborhood of about 3.9 million mom bloggers in the United States. Do you know how much data those people could provide about any number of life issues?! About marriage, about kids, about women's health, about parenting and work and all the rest.

That is a lot of writing about parenthood.

And given how confusing I find the whole "pacifier surrender" question, for our particular situation, I'm thinking that the data in there could be so useful. I'll bet there are at least two groups of kids when it comes to pacifier users. The casual and the addicts. I think my kid is the latter. And I would love to know more about her type, who are still walking around during the day with coat collars or anything else portable to chew on, even when they don't have a pacifier. Who are extremely orally focused, and get a lot of comfort from that. Is she at risk for smoking and a host of other drugs, the withdrawl from which I may one day have to witness in the same way I held her shrieking in the middle of last night when she didn't have her pacifier? Was that a foreshadowing?

Turns out, she didn't even remember that crying.

I do.

It was rough. On me and M more than her, apparently. And we finally gave it back to her (it had been her choice to try without, and, honey, I gave it the grad school try). And retreated in slight panic to the living room, kind of feeling echoes of her early months, shrieking in the middle of the night. Sheesh.

Or maybe she will just always chew on something as an adult, and a pen will do fine. Will trying to break her of this habit lead to good things or bad? Or at the very least, is she likely to snap out of it, like with so many other things that seem to just click into place with time?

Come on, Big Data, start looking at child development - things like colic factors and behaviors, tantrums, milestones, and, please, first of all (and soon), pacifiers.

Thanks. Hope to hear from you soon.