Moms on Facebook.

A few months ago I was e-stalking an ex-boyfriend from college on Facebook (oh shut up, like you’ve never done that?) and came across the following comment regarding the kinds of people who use the website:
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Stay-at-home moms are the worst. I wish there was a way to just block them all from joining facebook.  No one really cares what your kid is doing every second of the day, or that you just made macaroni and cheese for lunch.  It’s annoying.

My knee-jerk reaction was to reply with a bitchy comment blasting the author for being such a judgmental asshole (as you can imagine, it went over super well and I’m so glad I have this tendency to try to be the Internet Police all the damn time) but the lasting effect is that now I seem to over-analyze everything I ever want to put up on Facebook about my kids.  Whether it’s about their Halloween costumes, the fact that we changed the twins’ cribs into daybeds, or whatever–I am constantly evaluating the “boring-ness” of my status updates.
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It’s not really a big change for me because I was never one to post obsessively about my kids’ every trip to the potty chair in the first place, but I’ve noticed the ultra self-awareness transfers to every aspect of my online “persona” and I am constantly evaluating my status updates and trying to figure out how they sound from an outside perspective.  Creepy, huh?  It has occurred to me that my involvement with Facebook is directly proportionate to the level of “high-school-ness” in my life.  (Can you tell I like to make up new words by just adding the suffix “-ness” to them?)  At (almost) 28 years of age, there is absolutely no reason I should be worrying about what people will think about the way I live my life, right?  Yet there you are, Facebook, inviting criticism and judgment on our every move.  Yet I can’t help but love you.
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Anyway, the point of this post was to document some of the truly amazing status updates I’ve come across ever since I read that jerk’s comment on my ex-boyfriend’s page and started really noticing these things.  I’ve come to the conclusion that there are many different types of “Facebook Moms” (or Twitter Moms, or MySpace Moms, etc – pick your poison).  I’m quite sure I’m leaving some fantastic moms out so if you can think of any groups I’ve forgotten, please do comment!

First, we have the Super Proud Moms.  These are the moms who update their status every time their offspring says something cute, uses the potty chair, gets a hair cut, goes to school (every.single.day.), etc.  If you think about it, these people are probably the best parents on the planet because they seriously love their kids THAT much and everything their child does is amazing and worthy of sharing.  That’s actually really sweet.  I’m not exactly sure why that would annoy anyone; it makes me feel warm and fuzzy.  There *is* a group slightly related to the Super Proud Moms whose posts are NOT fuzz-provoking, however.  These are the Too Much Information Moms who seem to be under the impression that we need to know the bowel habits of their children, or the color of the snot running down their faces, or the frequency of puking/diarrhea/etc. when the little ones are sick.  Just… not cool, ladies.  Not cool.
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Next, on the opposite end of the proud-ness spectrum, there are the Exhausted and Resentful Moms.  You know the ones – they make the posts like “For the love of god and all that is holy, if these kids don’t stop fighting I am going to sell them to the gypsies!”  (OK, I actually just made that up off the top of my head because it sounds like something I would say – I fit into this category a lot, ha!)  There is a great deal of entertainment value in the posts that these parents make, and I think they may exist for the sole purpose of making the rest of us feel better about ourselves.  You should be glad if you have someone like this on your friends list; their status updates are almost as much fun to read as…
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The Drama Mamas!  These moms take various daily events that are generally not newsworthy, embellish the hell out of them and turn them into comic gold.  You might need to actually be a mom to appreciate this kind of humor, but I think these posts are fantastic.  Updates like, “The post office needs to hire some competent employees.  My mail keeps ending up at my neighbor’s house and I don’t have time to deal with this crap.  I hauled all the kids to the post office with me, dragged them in and didn’t even try to stop the baby from screaming her head off because she has another tooth coming in, and demanded to speak to whoever was in charge.  Suffice to say they won’t be screwing up my mail ever again.”  There’s another subset of the Drama Mama population, but you don’t actually have to be a parent to fit into this group.  These are the Thinly Veiled Insult Posters, otherwise known as the Cryptic Message Posters, and they post goodies like, “…thinks that people should watch what they say because it always gets back to the person whose back you are stabbing.”  These are great because they are sometimes so fabulously dramatic that they actually prompt you to dig around trying to figure out what exactly this person is referring to.  It’s like a Facebook Dramatic Mysteries Club, membership: You!
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Finally, in my research I have come across a very common kind of Facebook mom – the Minute-by-Minute Mom.  You know the type; their 58 daily updates read like a daily play-by-play of their totally normal lives.  “Just woke up.  Think I will make the kids some oatmeal for breakfast today,” followed moments later by, “Ahhh coffee. Now it’s time to start some laundry,” followed by, “Laundry – check.  Breakfast dishes – check.  Now it’s time to make the bed and hopefully the laundry will be ready to fold by the time The Price is Right is on!  Woohoo!”  These moms generally earn their way to the “Hide” list quite quickly, unless they have a tendency to fluctuate between Minute-by-Minute Mom and Drama Mama, in which case they are good for some laughs and can stick around.  For now.
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Like I said, I’m pretty sure I’m missing some fabulous groups so I’ll have to update this list as I think of them.  What group do you belong to?