The Things Dads Miss Out On

Ok. So not all dads. And obviously not all the time. But let's face it. Usually moms spend a good deal more time with the kids than dads. Not saying it's good or bad. I'm just saying.

* The experience where a kid can be standing right next to a box of tissues, but will opt to wipe their snotty, boogered up nose on your shirt and then laugh about it.

* The guilt a mom feels when, throughout the day, your children say, "Sit with me. Sit with my, Mommy! Please sit with me!" but you have too much to do to just sit with them all day long. (OK. So I'm sure dads experience this guilt a bit too. But I still think it goes a bit deeper for a mom.)

* The bittersweet feeling a mom experiences when her two daughters climb up on their playstructure and declare that they're in their clubhouse, and that no big people are allowed. The fact that they're growing up is wonderful, but one always assumes they have a bit more time before they start excluding their mom.

* The phenomenon where dads often appear in pictures with their children, but somehow, the mom never does. Because the mom is always taking the pictures, whereas a dad, for some reason or another, never thinks about picking up a camera and capturing a spontaenous, wonderful moment between a mother and her children.

* Discovering that their girly two-year-old outright refuses to use the Port-a-John at the local playground because it's "gross", and opts, instead, to pee in their pants and then think they can just continue playing like there's nothing weird about that at all.

* The son-of-a-bitch feeling a mom feels when she realizes that for the first time ever she does not have a change of clothing in her car for her children, which would allow her children to continue playing at the playground, which, in turn, would lessen the guilt she feels as she drags her children to the car to go home and change the child(ren)'s clothing.

* The pressure one feels when realizing that their children received several Easter presents from people not present at the time of the gift opening and now their mom has to write and send thank you cards or risk being bashed by other women everywhere (or at least in the family).

* Fine-tuning the art of bribery and realizing that the promise of ice cream if a child behaves is priceless.

* Cleaning up vomit residue after a child chokes on a Goldfish cracker, complete with gagging, a 20-minute coughing jag, watering eyes, and a declaration that it was their sibling's fault they choked.

* Frantically trying to figure out who can watch the kids when you are informed that a conference call for work is going to last 2.5 hours long, and you know that there's no way on god's green earth that the children will be quiet that long.

* Taking care of chidren on days when a mother is a raging mess of hormones and is acting like a(and let's face it... it's true) bitch is not a very good idea.