The end of my nine-month-miracle is only six weeks away, but just as I see light at the end of the tunnel, I'm ready to pull the emergency brake. It's not that I don't want this baby out of my body — I can't wait, and I don't hesitate to let everyone know it. The problem is that I suddenly feel like I'm not "ready." I want every last loose end, unpaid bill, and lingering dust bunny taken care of before my contractions start. This means that just when I'm at my least agile and most cranky, I feel the sudden urge to rearrange furniture or stock my pantry with enough supplies to keep us in cereal and snacks through the next missile crisis.

I had the same nesting urges at the end of my pregnancy with both Zach and Jacob, and those urges were no less relentless. A few weeks before I delivered Jacob, in fact, I was determined to finish helping Dan clean up the back yard, methodically going from one pile of shrubs to the other. Finally, though, I ran out of steam and had to admit that bending up and down and pitching heaps of weeds into a wheel barrel had to come to an end before I ended up in the hospital for a premature breaking of my water.

This time around, I'm trying to remind myself that all the nesting anxiety I feel now will soon pass. Still, I can't help getting into a tiff over things. I see stuff under the couch, knowing that it'll take me at least two minutes of huffing and puffing to get down on the floor, reach the offending object, and heave my big belly back up — so there it sits until I remember to ask Zach or someone to get it. Either that, or I poke it with my foot until it's pushed out of sight and out of mind, which lately is usually the case.

When I'm not driving myself nuts over the annoying messes I see everywhere, I'm simply trying to keep my eyes open. On any given night, I'm either suffering from pregnancy-induced insomnia or Zach's up at some ungodly hour with his blanket in hand tapping me on the back hoping I will let him crawl in bed with us - ok sometimes I let him but in my defense I am just too darn tired to walk him back to bed. Since I stay at home, I'm the one who gets up at night with Zach and Jacob (the idea is that I can grab a nap at some point during the day — as if!). Anyway, I like cuddling with Zach for I know that he will soon not even want to hug me, so, I take what I can get!  Jacob on the other hand still bounces off the walls even in his sleep so this keeps me up as well - his crib is in our room if that paints you any pictures.  My little Hyper Diaper is a handful, but he is a ray of sunshine when he wakes up in the morning with his curly hair popping up from his crib and a smile from earlobe to earlobe.  So sleep deprived I will be, at least until they turn 18 - right???

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