Waitin' on Sprout: Fourth and three

I promise that once he emerges from my womb, I will stop ignoring him. But I'm finding it simply impossible to pay any sort of attention whatsoever to Little Fish Number Four with Little Fishes Numbers One through Three running around causing so much mayhem all the time. If you want mom's attention around here, you have to be noisy. And babies in the womb are awfully quiet.

Little Sprout's making up for it by doing his best to remind me he's in there. I'm fairly certain he has some sort of death grip on my sciatic nerve, since sitting, standing, walking, bending over and lying down are all activities I can't do without some measure of pain these days. It's the same stuff I've dealt with in other pregnancies, it just happened to set in a lot sooner with this one.

As I bid farewell to the second trimester and enter the third and final stretch, I'm hauling around fifteen extra pounds and a bunch of bonus inches in girth. Either this baby is enormous, or everyone was right and things just "pop" a lot sooner the more babies you have. What I know with certainty is that my dearly loved maternity clothes that have carried me into the final days of three previous pregnancies are not going to make it to the finish line with this one.

Abby loves to feel the baby kick and has to be reminded not to shove her hands into my belly in order to high five her newest little brother. She's constantly talking about how cute he'll be, how tiny he'll be, and how helpful she's going to be when he arrives on the scene.

Caleb is perfectly content for little Sprout to stay in there as long as possible, as he has figured out that a new little boy in the house is probably going to be more interested in his trucks than his sister's dolls. He's not so into sharing these days.

And Jacob is convinced that my belly is only good for two things: poking, and driving cars over. Neither of these activities are enjoyable for me, but he laughs hysterically every time he gets a look at my baby bump, usually lifting his shirt up and poking his own belly button before standing back to compare our tummies.

One of these days, little Sprout will have a name, and a place to sleep, and I might even take a picture of my profile like I did on an almost weekly basis with all my other children.

I still have three months to go. No rush.