Being a mom can’t be an easy job.

I mean, right off the bat – that first part?!

Nope!

I’ve seen the whole ordeal up close and personal exactly once and if it’s all the same to you, I’ll just go back to assuming that babies are brought into this world via delivery by magical birds and you can save all of the gory details for somebody who has a stronger stomach than me, thank you very much…

But even once you get beyond the whole miracle of childbirth itself, the rest of motherhood certainly doesn’t seem like it’d be much of a picnic, either … unless you’re one who considers dealing with a daily deluge of diaper dangers and dinner drama to be all that and a bag of chips. And don’t get me wrong – us dads certainly deal with our share of toddler trauma, too, but the way that we handle our parenting duties is … well … different. 

For example, often times I’m tasked with getting my kids dressed, but when their mom dresses our kids, it’s important to her that everyone wears different clothes every day.

…and preferably clean clothes to boot!

Moms also take care to ensure not only that the kids eat food every day, but also that their selections are not solely members of the snacking and dessert food groups. 

Mom is the one who steps up to declare, “Hey, maybe don’t play fetch with the dog indoors when she keeps running past our expensive, antique lamp…” while Dad is more likely to say, “Nice throw, son! Now let’s see if she can catch this!”

When moms clean, they actually clean – hauling out dusters and vacuums and all sorts of medieval cleaning instruments, whereas I’m not going to lie that maybe once or twice I’ve just flipped up the footstool and shoved everything underneath before settling in to watch seven hours of a James Bond marathon…

Seriously, though, if James Bond had the choice between picking up toys in the family room or zipping around in a roadster with Halle Berry, which one do you think that 007 would pick?!

Moms are the ones who are tasked with breastfeeding, which I don’t know about you but it just seems like it would be really draining to me…

Moms are the ones that put band-aids on our kids’ knees – not for a lack of trying, but again in my own experience as a dad I tend to spend more time flailing around the house trying to figure out where we keep the band-aids than I do providing an sort of actual medical assistance!

Moms are more likely to jump up to check on a crying baby, or jump up to check on that burning smell coming from the kitchen for that matter, while it’s really a dad’s prerogative to just sort of wait it out and see what happens – in both scenarios, really!

And so I think it kind of goes without saying that we as a people owe a lot to our moms, not only for the whole birthing us into the world-thing and all, but also for helping to keep us clean and alive despite our own best efforts otherwise.

Wherever there’s a bandaged knee or a home-cooked meal that didn’t come out of the freezer twenty minutes earlier, our moms are there.

Wherever there’s a kid wearing 58 layers of clothing because the weatherman said that it could get chilly that day, our moms are there.

And wherever there’s an utterly exhausted dad who just needs a break because he can’t take another minute of having baby food spat back in his face as if his child were some sort of sadistic volcano egged on by the sounds of Elmo’s song on perpetual repeat, who’s the first to calmly slide to provide a desperately needed relief effort with a glass of wine in one hand and a song from Mary Poppins on her lips to soothe the savage, eight-month-old beast?!

Thanks, moms – we couldn’t enjoy this encore presentation of Goldfinger without you…