We have all been there. In a mother’s world there is so much to do, and so little time to do it.

Stay-at-home mom’s have all day to clean, cook and play with their children right? Wrong!  Before my daughter, I worked full time. I remember thinking, “I can’t wait to be a stay-at-home mom. I’ll have so much more time to get everything done.”Go ahead, i know you’re thinking it… Bahahahahaha…

Let’s face it, even though it may appear that we have all day, the fact of the matter is, we don’t. We have small increments of time throughout the day that might add up to a few hours, if we’re lucky.

As a first time mom, there are few days that I feel like I have it all together, and there are days where I sit at the house and just want to spend the day on the porch so that I don’t have to look at it.

Some days Natalie will take 3-hour naps and some days I am lucky if she takes a nap for 20 minutes (those make for really long days by the way).

Several weeks back we were invited over to visit some friends who had a newborn that we were dying to see. I remember walking into their home and thinking, how in the world is this house clean? Granted, she was a more experienced stay-at-home mom. But even so, she had a little toddler running around as well. I instantly began doing what all of us women are so good at doing, which is comparing our lives to other’s lives. Shoot, I had a newborn and I could barely keep one room clean, and here she was with an entire house (larger than mine) spotless. How the heck did she have the time for that?

I know the majority of us stay-at-home moms struggle to find the time to do everything we need to do, including keeping our kids changed and fed. But we desperately want for our home to feel like a home, not a messy teenager’s bedroom. So we try to do a load of laundry with a baby on our hip. We try to vacuum real quick while they are content in their swing. We plan on doing the dishes while they are taking their short nap, but once we lay them down we realize that the dishes will most likely wake them up. So we save them for later and move on to the laundry. Unfortunately, as we are folding the laundry the dogs decide its time to fight as loud as they can, which wakes the baby up anyways. And this, of course, continues all day.

Your hubby gets home from work, opens the door, and walks into a house that looks like it was hit by a hurricane. There is laundry half folded all over the couch, the coffee table is scattered with random items, and the baby’s stuff is everywhere. The sink is piled high with dishes, half of the carpet is vacuumed, and the frozen lasagna that you were going to cook for dinner is still sitting on the counter. On top of that, the trash is all over the kitchen due to the dog’s dumpster diving habit, and you are sitting on the couch, underneath a cranky, sleeping baby, thinking of everything you still need to do but are now too tired to do.

It is days like these that I realize how lucky I am to have such an amazing, supportive husband. A husband that works hard so that I can live this wonderful, crazy, overwhelming life that I have always dreamed of. A husband that can walk into our house, look past the mess and give me that smile that I desperately needed all day.

Time… there is never enough of it. I am learning to not stress about everything that I think I need to do. I have stopped making a “chore list” for myself, because all it does is remind me of all the stuff I wasn’t able to get done. Most days the clothes don’t make it to the closet, but living out of a laundry basket isn’t the end of the world. Time with my daughter is something that I have decided is more important to me than keeping a spotless house.

Time is what you make of it. We get to choose everyday how we use it. I choose to use my time to give my daughter the attention that she craves, and most of the time it means I end up exhausted looking at a cluttered house. And that is ok with me.

With that being said, today I was blessed with a very smooth morning with Natalie. After waking up and nursing, she spent an entire hour content playing underneath her activity gym, watching the Mickey Mouse Clubhouse. I was able to, not only get myself dressed for the day, but do the dishes, clean the living room, vacuum, AND eat breakfast! I am happy to say that the living room looks wonderful and I can relax stress-free this afternoon with my sweet family.