SOHN ON THE SAHM. Gawker makes a big deal over the fact that Amy Sohn's nanny (the nanny for Amy and her husband Jake's baby daughter, not Amy herself) is from Tibet. But that's hardly the focus of Sohn's reader letter of Summer '06.

Sohn's self-described "rant" deals largely with the negative consequences of being a Stay At Home Mom (SAHM). According to Sohn, it leads to a smidgin of mommy monomania.

When you spend all day with a baby you go a little crazy and I don’t think the SAHMs realize how crazy they are. All these college-educated smart women who once had opinions about things and read the newspaper now can only talk about poop and pancakes with kale and Veggie Bootie and natural Cheerios versus regular ones. My husband and I go to this playground called the Tot Lot near our house and we nicknamed it "Compare and Despair" because all any of the mothers talk about is, "Is she crawling? Is she walking? Oh my goodness, she has so much hair/so many teeth. She's so tall/long/verbal/expressive." It starts with "How old?" and then from "How old?" they get into what their kid is doing versus what your kid is doing versus what all kids should be doing and after half an hour of this you’re ready to stay inside for the rest of the summer. They sit around all day watching other babies play and worrying about their own baby’s development.

Sohn (whose writing I admire) sets herself apart from this crowd. Literally. She describes walking away from a pair of moms after hearing only four words of baby-related banter. She and her husband Jake share baby care responsibilities but also "pay up the wazoo" for that two-day-per-week Tibetan nanny they sometimes hire for an extra night.

Yet to an outside party (such as myself), that might not be enough. Sohn's previous reader letter of August 2005 was almost entirely about being...a new mom. The one before that (June 2005) was about being on the verge of being...a new mom. And what lies ahead for Amy? In her 1600-plus word mommyhood rant, she advises readers to "Keep your eye out for something by me in an upcoming issue of New York on a topic related to parenting."

Parenting, parenting, parenting! Maybe Amy and Jake need to invest more in that nanny. Though Sohn also writes "I wouldn’t mind going head to head on Fox with that twiglike evil shiksa Ann Coulter." Sounds terrific! Maybe she'll get around to that--when baby goes off to college. (Though, come to think of it, the subject might be those SAHMs....)

For old time's sake, here's one of Sohn's sex columns for New York Press. And you haven't seen the movie Spin the Bottle, which she co-wrote, you might want to give it a whirl.