There is a common assumption that being a mother changes you. That once you pump that puppy out of your snatch, your personality morphs into something lamer.  Your identity becomes more about being a parent than an individual, and you will become consumed by your endless devotion to your child and incessant need to talk about it.

As a result all your friends without kids will groan and roll their eyes at you when you aren’t looking, and give your kid the finger when their back is turned.  Not because they hate you, or your child, but because you both are annoying.

I am sure I am slightly more irritating then I was in my pre-Munch days…. But I would like to think I haven’t fallen too deep into the rabbit whole of momness.  I want to be one of those moms that when people talk about me, they say “Toni is still Toni, even though she has feces under her fingernails and her kid is slightly demanding.”  (In this fantasy they say “slightly” because they are being polite and not talking shit behind my back, because Munch just IS demanding.  Also in this fantasy I am wearing a really cute maroon leather jacket and my hair is brushed.  Oh, and my armpits are shaved… and I know French, because, hey, I am that intellectual).

It is a balancing act being a parent, maintaining your cool factor, pretending that you don’t care about your cool factor, making sure you are still hip with the times, then pretending like you are so hip with the times you don’t even care what’s hip or what time it is. Of course having The Munch has changed me, but I want it to be in a fun Andy Warhol way, not a Norman Rockwell one.  She is my sun, but I can’t exist in her shadow. Because soon she is going to be a teenager taking bong hits, flirting with boys through her telepathic head transplant, living her life, and I will still need to have a funk factor going on in my life.