It’s nearly two weeks before Mother’s Day, so you’d think these two news items from today would have been embargoed:

- Salary.com flexes its compensation-analysis muscles to figure that during 2006, the average American mom performed household work that amounted to the equivalent of $138,000 in annual salary. She did this by wearing many hats:

The 10 jobs listed as comprising a mother’s work were housekeeper, cook, day care center teacher, laundry machine operator, van driver, facilities manager, janitor, computer operator, chief executive officer and psychologist, [Salary.com Inc.] said.

- On top of all that, research has found that the little X chromosome — which makes it possible to be a mom in the first place — determines way more than just a child’s gender:

As scientists who study the chromosome lately have learned, the X is a rich repository of genes vital to brain development and could hold the key to the evolution of our particularly corrugated cortex. Moreover, the X chromosome behaves unlike any of the other chromosomes of the body — unlike little big-man Y, certainly, but also unlike our 22 other pairs of chromosomes, the self-satisfied autosomes that constitute the rest of our genome, of the complete DNA kit packed into every cell that we carry. It is a supple, switchbacking, multitasking gumby doll patch of the genome; and the closer you look, the more Cirque du Soleil it appears.

Given all this mommypower, I guess it’s never too early to show appreciation. Tell you what, Mom: This year, the lunch is on me!