Time...

Where does it go? I guess they take it along with the placenta of your second child. Unless you belong to the elite group that eats it for nourishment (the placenta I mean, not time, cause, well, eating time would just be weird), in that case...time just must disappear. Regardless, it's gone.
2 Kids is rather tough when you want to take a leisurely lunch with friends, or run into the store for something really quick. It can easily add on hours to a relatively simple task. In the end, though, it's all worth it when those same children whom you wanted to beat in the shoe department, look at you with those beautiful blue eyes and give you a smile that melts your heart. That is, right before they take a crap in their pants and then tell you they have to go poop. Oh well, that's motherhood. And that's what I'm talking about today.
Just how much do we do? How much would we get paid? Why is it that in today's society your level of worth is based on your annual income? Being a stay at home mom; easily the toughest job out there; is seen as worthless in our "meritocracy". Yet, the man on Wall Street who moves money back and forth from accounts to earn interest is SO prestige. How is he making the world a better place? I'm sure all you moms out there can relate, even the ones who do work full time, you probably want to go back to work in the evening because it's easier than taking care of children 24-7. It's hard. Harder than it looks. Most husbands say, “it’s easier for you because you're around them all the time, but every time you leave, I have to figure things out." They don't think we have to figure things out? They don't think we had to learn the things we know now? I think they think we're always so calm and have the answers, but really, I'm making it up as I go along too...I'm just not admitting it! :)
So, here is a look at an average day in the life of me. Feel free to comment on anything I may leave out, i.e. road blocks in your day, crap that pops up out of no where...etc...

5:30 am- Hannah starts fussing, the kids share a room, so I go in as quick as I can to get her before waking Ethan. I come back to bed and feed her and usually fall back to sleep (if I haven't completely soaked through my nursing bra because I still haven't had time to get to the store and by more nursing pads).
6:30 am- Husband gets up and undoubtedly wakes me, not on purpose; sleepy Pauly is just very clumsy.
7:00 am- Hear, "Can I come out now???" bellowing from the bedroom across the hall. UGH, thought I might make it to 7:30 at least.
7:15 am- Get downstairs, through a waffle in the toaster, let the over hungry Chihuahua out, talk Ethan out of Goldfish crackers for breakfast, change his poopy diaper (who poops in the night?...yuck!), get Hannah a new diaper, let the dog out to go poop, get E in his chair to eat breakfast, console his crying over the fact that he wanted to pull the chair up to the table himself, let the dog back in and get a treat for him to avoid annoyance, get Hannah in the swing or somewhere she would be content, and pour myself a cup of coffee (provided DH has made it the night before). Morning routine over. Whew.
7:30 am- Try to make Ethan understand that once a dog eats something, you can't have it back.
7:35 am- Try to convince Ethan that waffles are great for him and not so good for the dog.
7:40 am- Yell at Ethan to stop feeding the dog and threaten to take all food away.
7:45 am- Tell Ethan that I am saving the waffle for when he gets hungry and asks for a snack, trying to teach that if you don't eat all your meal, no dessert, kids are starving, blah, blah, blah...he doesn't seem to care.
8:00 am- Cartoons, Lord, thank you for cartoons, thank you for creating something to rot my child's brain so I may have an hour of silence to drink my caffeinated beverage in the morning. Amen.
8:30 am- Tell Ethan to stop kicking at the dog.
8:35 am- Try to teach Ethan that kicking the dog is not nice.
8:40 am- Yell at Ethan.
8:45 am- Console Hannah for waking her while yelling at Ethan.
9:00am- Let's get dressed, no you cannot wear your pajamas out, get back here, now, put your shirt on, now, shorts, now, 1...2...3...go to time out.
9:30 am- Feed Hannah
10:00am- Try and get half-way presentable looking to go run errands.
10:30am- Tell Ethan anything I can to get him to get into the car.
10:35am- Give Ethan the goldfish for getting in the car. Yay, let's go!
10:36am- Run back in to the house to grab something I forgot.
10:37am- Wander aimlessly around the house trying desperately to remember what I forgot.
10:45am- Ok, got the keys, now we can go.
11:00am- Grocery store arrival.
11:20am- We are finally in the store after a 20 minute argument about holding hands in the parking lot.
11:30am- Try and explain to Ethan why they are all out of the "car" carts and we have to use a regular one. This proves very difficult when we pass other families in the car carts.
12:00pm- Hannah is surprisingly still asleep, what an awesome baby.
12:10pm- Ethan decides to wake Hannah up by kicking the cart over and over again.
12:15pm- I am now running through the remainder of the store grabbing things I hope are on the list...that I left at home.
12:45pm- We are now home. Feed lunch to E and it's quiet time. I send him upstairs, much to his demise, and put him in his room. He doesn't have to sleep, but I would love it if it happened.
1:15pm- Hear, "I just wake up!" several times from the bedroom.
1:30pm- Realize that putting the Chihuahua in his crate was the thing I forgot.
1:35pm- Clean up a "tootsie roll" from the laundry room floor. Let the dog outside.
1:40pm- Throw away wrapper from Ethan's crackers that the dog got.
1:50pm- Finally get everything in from the car, and get the milk into the fridge before it spoils.
2:00pm- Remember to feed myself.
2:05pm- Hannah wakes up and needs to eat. Postpone my lunch.
2:15pm- Ethan is still screaming, hasn't napped, and wants to come out.
2:20pm- Change another poopy diaper, what is it with this kid and pooping?!
2:30pm- After chasing E around the room and finally pinning him down to change him, he puts his shoes on and goes outside.
2:40pm- Tell Ethan that this is mommy's lunch and if he would like to eat something, he needs to come in and wash his hands from picking flowers (weeds) in the yard.
2:50pm- Consoling Ethan and feeling guilty for not letting him eat my food.
2:55pm- Getting angry for feeling guilty.
3:00pm- Give him a snack and send him out again.
The next 2 hours- Open and close the door about 15 times to let him in and out. Change Hannah. Get some amount of housework done so my husband doesn't think I just sat around all day.
5:30pm- DH is home and I haven't even thought about dinner...spaghetti it is...OH! Hannah needs to eat again!
5:45pm- Yell at Ethan to stop kicking at the dog again...1...2...3...Ugh, I'm too tired to punish you...
6:00pm- Eat, try and have a conversation with DH while keeping an eye on Ethan to not feed the dog the spaghetti that he won't eat.
6:30pm- Think that I am off duty and husband will take over.
6:35pm- Get about 15 minutes to clean up the table and husband goes to computer.
**I will add, though, DH takes out the garbage and cleans the coffee maker and makes coffee for the next morning during this time usually. So I can't complain too much.**
7:00pm- Start talking about bedtime and bath since he didn't have a nap.
7:05pm- Deal with meltdown about bedtime.
7:15pm- Sing the "cleanup" song while putting all the toys away...hoping Ethan will help. (Doesn't happen)
7:30pm- Finally get Ethan upstairs to get a bath.
7:35pm- I head back down to clean up and get Hannah ready to eat once more before bed, while DH gives E a bath and puts him to bed.
8:00pm- Feed Hannah-feel guilty for not spending any one on one face time with her, spend some time with her, then put her to bed.
Then we usually stay up way too late watching movies or TV because we like to pretend that we are young and don't need to rest.
Finally get to bed around 11 and at 5:30, it all starts over.

The daily activities vary between doctor's visits, post office, general shopping, volunteer work, getting lunch with friends and wondering how they make it look so easy, and so on.
Add into this anything that may upset the routine one bit; emergency phone calls, dealing with anything on base (housing, IPAC, TMO, legal, birth registration), husbands working late or being on deployment, kids crapping up the back of their diaper, ya know, the usual stuff.
I'm almost positive that every mom is as busy as this if not more. Someone did a work up of how much money a stay at home mom would make if paid for every job title we own.
Here is what MSN money has to say:
http://articles.moneycentral.msn.com/CollegeAndFamily/RaiseKids/ThePriceOfAMom.aspx

This shows a comparative between SAH dads vs. moms:
http://www.businesswire.com/portal/site/google/index.jsp?ndmViewId=news_view&newsId=20070613005702&newsLang=en

Here is a site you can print your very own paycheck for being a mom! That is…if you have time to do it…
http://swz.salary.com/momsalarywizard/htmls/mswl_momcenter.html

Hope I made your day SAHMs!