What do stay-at-home moms do all day?

A friend of mine posted an article from the Carolyn Hax column in the Washington Posted to her facebook page. I found it very encouraging.

The letter was from a friend of a new mom and asked, "What do stay-at-home moms do all day? Please no lists of library, grocery store, dry cleaners . . . I do all those things, too, and I don't do them EVERY DAY. I guess what I'm asking is: What is a typical day and why don't moms have time for a call or e-mail?"

As I look around me at the end of an exhausting day and see nothing but mess I have often asked myself the same thing. I wonder, "What did I do today? I didn't get around to the dishes, the floors, the laundry, nothing. Why then, am I SO exhausted?" It's days like this that I so often feel like I've failed as a wife and mother.

Carolyn answers like this: "When you have young kids, your typical day is: constant attention, from getting them out of bed, fed, clean, dressed; to keeping them out of harm's way; to answering their coos, cries, questions; to having two arms and carrying one kid, one set of car keys, and supplies for even the quickest trips, including the latest-to-be-declared-essential piece of molded plastic gear; to keeping them from unshelving books at the library; to enforcing rest times; to staying one step ahead of them lest they get too hungry, tired or bored, any one of which produces the kind of checkout-line screaming that gets the checkout line shaking its head.
It's needing 45 minutes to do what takes others 15.
It's constant vigilance, constant touch, constant use of your voice, constant relegation of your needs to the second tier.
It's constant scrutiny and second-guessing from family and friends, well-meaning and otherwise. It's resisting constant temptation to seek short-term relief at everyone's long-term expense.
It's doing all this while concurrently teaching virtually everything -- language, manners, safety, resourcefulness, discipline, curiosity, creativity. Empathy. Everything.
It's also a choice, yes. And a joy. But if you spent all day, every day, with this brand of joy, and then, when you got your first 10 minutes to yourself, [you might want] to be alone with your thoughts instead of calling a good friend."

In short, it's everything that you don't see. Everything that I don't see. Even though this is what I'm doing all day every day, at the end of the day, I'm looking around to SEE what I did that day and getting down on myself when it LOOKS like I've done nothing. I needed this put into words that I could see right in front of me to pick me up, encourage me, and remind me that even if no one can SEE the labors of my day, it was the most important work I could have done that day.