As I hinted at earlier, I’m on my own this month. The Lovely and Talented Wife (LATW) is on day 12 of a 26 day world tour with stops in Seattle, Calgary, Denver, and other exotic locales. She’s in beautiful Calgary today.

OK, so maybe it’s not exactly a world tour. But they are driving it—all 4,966 miles. Unfortunately, it’s for business but she’s got time off just about every day for sight-seeing.

LATW World Tour 2007

So I’ve been exclusively seeing after the kids. It’s the longest either one of us has ever had to care for them single-handedly. But, honestly, it’s not that big of a deal. They are both at an age where, if I were to disappear this instant, they would survive handily. Which is to say, they know how to feed and clothe themselves and turn on the television. The house is clean, the laundry is done, homework is returned on time… heck, their rooms are even picked up.

One somewhat peculiar thing I’ve noticed is the reaction I get from other people when they find out what my situation is. I’m met with either wide-eyed amazement (usually from men) or skepticism (or some combination of both). I think the LATW and I normally split the household and child-rearing duties about 50%. And that’s by choice and as it should be. It’s the main reason I’ve been working at home these past years (and in fact I took a pretty large pay cut to do it back in 2005).

The thing that irks me a little bit is that, now, I get way more credit than I deserve—like I’m doing something super-human. And before, I now realize, I wasn’t getting any credit at all. Of course, I don’t do it for credit, and I guess it balances out, but it shows you that many folks still have pretty traditional ideas about a man’s role in raising children.