Sorry to be so quiet over the weekend…I’ve been busy.

When you’re pregnant, they tell you that as you get close to the time that the baby will be born, that something in your hormones will cause the “nesting” effect. Nesting refers to the mom preparing her home for the arrival of her new baby, as a mother bird prepares her nest for her eggs and baby birds.

I even had one book that said that “nesting” by a pregnant woman was a sure sign that delivery was near…that when a large pregnant woman started irrationally scrubbing floors and organizing kitchen cabinets (or in my case trying to fertilize the lawn), you knew that the baby wasn’t too far off.

I was a serious “nester” when I was pregnant. I like a clean house to begin with and am a pretty organized person, but towards the end of my pregnancies, watch out. Josh would come home from work to find the entire contents of a closet that hadn’t seen the light of day in years emptied onto the floor while I scrubbed shelves and then reorganized things.

Well, I am here to tell you that I am pretty sure that nesting isn’t caused by hormones (although I do have to say it seems to be a woman thing, because not once with nine new additions has Josh ever felt the irrepressible urge to clean something). If it is caused by hormones, I am sure that it is not due to pregnancy hormones, because this adoptive mama is nesting like crazy!

In the last few days I have gone through all of my children’s closets and dressers, organizing clothes, pulling out stuff that is too small and moving it to a sibling’s closet or packing it up for someone to grow in to, making piles to donate to the orphanage and tossing stuff that is stained/torn beyond repair.

I have emptied, cleaned and organized my laundry/storage room. I have gone through all of the kids’ toy boxes and shelves (with their help) and “purged”. We ended up with three huge garbage bags of junk and a decent-sized pile for a yard sale, and their rooms look great. I also cleaned out and organized the large walk-in closets in my room and in Marcus and Ben’s room, as those are the places where I tend to “dump” stuff. Ben is as anti-clutter as I am, and he is thrilled with his new extra-tidy room and closet (and holy cow was he a good helper through all of this!).

Josh watched me all weekend like I was a madwoman, with that “here we go again” look in his eye. This week I am emptying out the unfinished room which is currently being used for storage, and is going to be finished into a new bedroom to make room for Belane. (Mercy will be getting her own room in the new room and Belane will share with Des).

This is my last big project, and once that is done, I’ll really feel ready for my “baby” to come. Although instead of sitting around waiting for my water to break, I’ll be waiting on US immigration.