Some of you more observant readers may have noticed the “Small Change” button that has appeared on my sidebar.  This is a project and challenge that was started by Beth, over at “So the Fish Said” and “Diary of a Playgroup Dropout”.  If you don’t read her, you must, must, must add her to your blogroll.  Her honest, self-effacing humor cracks me up.  And if Mia Bean isn’t one of the cutest little things on the internet, I don’t know what is.  I am already trying to figure out how to hook her up with Harry when he reaches any age where he can decently date.

I was stunned to hear the term “mommyblogger” used as a derisive.  Honestly, I would have to say that some of the best writing on the web is done by those so-called “mommy-bloggers”.  We (since apparently Bloglines has placed me in the mommyblogging category) may have started our blogs to have an outlet to pour maternal angst, but if you pigeonhole these women and write them off as brag-book writers, you are missing out on some of the most intelligent commentators out there. 

And some of the most humane.  

I think being a mother forces you to adopt a certain optimism about the future of mankind out of self-defense.  Nobody wants to think they are raising their children to send forth into the Apocalypse.  Having become a mother deep into middle age, I will admit to poo-pooing this assertion by the mothers that went before me, but I was unprepared for how motherhood leaves you completely raw to the pain and injustice of the world, like somehow the exponential increase in love a child brings into your life has to be balanced by an equal increase in heartbreak. 

I have long since lost the youthful fantasy that I can change the world.  But, like Candide, I can make my little corner of it just a little better. I will let Beth explain what the Small Change challenge is in her own words.  She does it a lot better than I ever could.

And I am off to make the world a better place, one child at a time.  I’ll tell you about it when I am done.