Friday morning, do dads do this?

I've often mused that many men in my kind of position are at an advantage just because their lives are simpler. Take this morning, for example. I slept in because my first meeting of the day didn't start until 8:30 - yeah for me! Things started out just fine, shower, etc. Then, as I was preparing to follow my morning routine, I got interrupted by the baby waking up. Got the baby. soaking wet. change the baby, change her clothes, change the bed, start the laundry. OK. 5 minutes behind now. Restart. Oops, here comes the oldest. He woke up with a bloddy nose. Yuck! Get him settled, move him to the shower. It looks like a murder occurred in the bathroom - -how the heck did his bloddy nose create this?! Get out the cleaner, etc. Another 15 minutes behind. Change his bed, more laundry, clean the carpet, etc. Restart. Only time for a quick bite of breakfast now. And out the door. It's like I'm out of breath before I even start the workday!



My morning meeting is with my favorite CEO. We have a sleeves-rolled-up session to knock out some details for some software changes he wanted a week ago but hasn't been able to articulate. And, I can only wonder how his morning started! Or, how his mornings were when his kids were little. Sigh.



I'm lucky, though. My husband is always right there to take care of details that I point out to him and even a few extras beyond that. I just wonder how much intellectual capital I surrender to things like our dinner menus, our shopping list, when the kids need new shoes, if I sent the right stuff to school, and so on; versus the average dad. Even a really involved dad. It's no wonder that its taken so long for women to reach the boardroom! Just as they were heading there, they probably got a call from school because they forgot to send to pack a lunch for the kid's field trip that day!

I've given up trying to reach the boardroom myself. Truthfully, my son's second grade teacher is WAY more fogiving than any boss I've had and remembering to put the right kind of cookie into the box lunch seems to rank well above that sales presentation I needed to finish yesterday. And maybe that idea is what makes a working mom so different from a working dad. Or, maybe that's just what makes me so different from my favorite CEO Client!