There are those who pride themselves on a clean house. They work hard at it, adhering to a strict rotation of chores, never missing a scheduled dusting or floor waxing. My mother is one of these people. Her home is immaculate, even in the places where sane folks might take a shortcut or two, like the laundry room and garage. It is a painfully, frightfully spotless house. With this staggering example before me, I'd long ago made peace with the fact that my own housekeeping standards are significantly lower. I considered myself clean, but untidy. Meaning, no dirty dishes lying around, but a pile of magazines and catalogs anchored by a half-empty bottle of spring water in the living room. Little piles of mail and photographs and cds might be stacked all over the place, but the floors get vacuumed. I actually used to apologize for the state of our house to visitors. These people would look at me like I was nuts and respond with comments like, you should see our place, or just wait till you have kids. I rated myself a lazy, lousy housekeeper, but I was deluded. Compared to the slovenly chaos we're presently residing in, the old me made Martha Stewart look relaxed. I came to this realization one recent afternoon when, as I sat rocking the baby, I watched a dust bunny the size of a Shih-Tzu roll gently across the floor and lodge itself under the couch. Did I get up and whisk it into the trash then sweep the whole room as the old me might have done? I did not. Instead, I watched it for a few minutes, and then forgot about it. In fact, I only mention it now because the air conditioner just kicked on and stirred up a breeze, freeing this dust bunny to continue its slow journey around our living room. I fear that if it grows much larger it's going to want to be named and fed. Seeing this has led me to a shocking discovery: my house used to be really clean, and I used to actually do a damn thing around here. I used to be productive, efficient, and orderly. I apparently never sat still. But now I'm living on baby time, and it's a whole new game.

Baby time seems to be an odd warping of the whole time-space continuum. Minutes can feel like hours as, for example, when the baby is squalling like an angry red-faced irrational monster whose tiny lungs can somehow produce deafening roars without tiring. Hours can pass in seconds, especially those spent cooing, burbling, and repeatedly opening one's eyes wide in mock surprise, all for the amusement of the baby who, if feeling so inclined, will offer up a huge gummy smile in reward. Baby time means that someone always seems to be asking what's for dinner, even though it can't possibly be that late already. In the baby time zone it is physically impossible to return phone calls or e-mail, mostly because the short-term memory doesn't function here. A message received on Monday doesn't really register till Thursday, and then no one knows where the phone is anyway, and although you have every intention of really getting your act together tomorrow, well, tomorrow flies by in such a blur that who could even remember what day it is much less what plans you had for it? It's funny how baby time works. Unlike the minutes spent watching the clock at a job you despise, or the hours stolen from you at the DMV or in traffic, in baby time you're blissfully unaware of how the days and weeks race by. Not feeling their passage, it's a shock to discover that it's Monday again, or payday already, or that a new month has started.

Before having one, I had a great many wrong ideas about babies. For starters, I thought that they were wee immobile blobs that spent the majority of each day sleeping. Not mine. With the exception of a little catnap here or there, she's awake all day long. She stares at us, her enormous eyes following everything we do. She babbles and laughs, demanding to be included in all activities. Already a seasoned nap-fighter, she's suspicious of her swing, bassinet, bouncy chair and car seat. She recognizes them for what they are: temporary baby storage units, and she doesn't want to be stored. She wants to be talked to and looked at and tickled and squeezed. So we do. And somehow, this takes all day. At night, we collapse into bed, utterly exhausted. Tomorrow I'm going to clean out the car, my husband says. Remind me, I respond, to take that stuff to the dry cleaner. We fall asleep to the gentle snoring of our dogs and our daughter, and wake up having forgotten whatever it was we'd sworn the night before to remember.

I used to lift weights, and cook, and go to lunch, and surf the Net. I used to talk on the phone for an hour. I used to go to the bookstore and spend an afternoon just looking. I used to shop -- not because I needed anything, but just because I felt like looking. And reading! I can't believe the time I spent reading! Every now and again I'd even iron my pillowcases, because a freshly ironed pillowcase feels so good on a summer night. Once upon a time, I'd give myself a French manicure, a painstaking operation that can consume the better part of an evening. We rode our bikes and went to movies. We played Scrabble. I had oceans and oceans of time, all mine to spend or to waste, all a memory now.

Not long ago, feeling stressed by the messy house and ringing phone, I caught myself stuffing the baby into her swing while simultaneously checking my watch and leaving a voice mail message for a co-worker. Olivia was happily babbling and I was telling her to hush while I made the call. I suddenly felt awful, like a bad mother with no sense of what's truly important. I hung up the phone and pulled her into my lap. After kissing her little head at least twelve times in apology, I whispered into her ear the poem I'd just seen at her Grandma Jacque's house. Worked in needlepoint, it hangs on her kitchen wall:

Cleaning and scrubbing can wait till tomorrow, For babies grow up, we've learned to our sorrow. So quiet down cobwebs, Dust go to sleep. I'm rocking my baby And babies don't keep.

Oceans and oceans of time - Things will get done when they get done... I'm living on baby time now.