On Being a "Cool Mom"

I've been thinking, lately, about my strange reluctance to blog about being a mother, or talk about it with non-parent friends, or even seem like I'm not overly "into" the whole having-a-kid-thing: "What, that guy?  Oh yeah he just tags along.  Can't get rid of him."  And after yesterday's entry about not-giving-a-fuck-what-other-people-think, I realized it's time for me to knock it off.

I've always been so afraid of becoming one of those women for whom the role of Mother is everything they are, full stop.  I have always found (and still do find) it hideously tedious to spend time with women who literally talk about nothing but their kids, just as I find it hideously tedious to spend time with anyone who only talks about one subject ever (::coughcrossfitforexamplecough::).  And thus I've been playing the avoidance game, trying to, well, avoid being one of those mothers.  I wanted to be one of the cool mothers I'd known- the ones who still had lives and dreams outside of their child's latest developmental milestones.

But this morning, as I was mulling the topic over yet again, I suddenly realized- how could I know they were "cool mothers" if they didn't talk about their kids at all?  Otherwise they'd just be "cool", no modifier.  So what I'm saying is that I'm going to stop pretending to the general public like Neeps isn't a huge and awesome part of my life right now- because he is.  He's the biggest, scariest damn adventure I've ever embarked on, and it's disingenuous to behave otherwise.  And yeah, right now he's taking up the majority of my brain-space, but that's not because I've lost my Self- it's because there's a steep-ass learning-curve on keeping a tiny human alive and happy.  And the other parts of my brain are still furiously churning, figuring out how I can still do the other things I love, with or without him strapped to my chest.  And if people aren't interested in hearing about him, it's on them to tune me out, not on me not to bring him up in the first place.

So yeah.  It's gonna' be a little mommy-centric around here for a while, but I hope you'll stick around and see how things develop.  It's going to be so cool.