"Wow! You look huge now!"

Well, it is no longer a question whether I'm actually pregnant. Over the last few weeks, I've gone from hearing comments like, "You're not even showing at all" to "Wow! You're gonna be huge by January". Somehow over the last weekend my belly size doubled. I was a bit of a shock to everyone when I showed up at school Monday.

Things didn't slow down much this week as I am continuing to get ready for the end of the grading period. I know everyone will be asking at conferences about the transition and who will be taking over. I'm not sure I'm ready to reveal it yet and, more than that, I don't want the focus to be on me when it should be on the kids and their progress. I have a great deal of confidence in my long-term substitute and I know she'll be fabulous, but I just love my job and want to be in the game until I go on leave.

Today Philip and I really started prepping the baby's room. One of our very generous neighbors gave us several items to add to our collection of hand-me-downs. They did such an amazing job of cleaning everything up and we it really put us in the mood to get things ready around here. We have a lot of the necessities now thanks to friends, neighbors and family members. The baby's room is going to be painted blue tomorrow and tonight Philip trimmed a wall-sized world map to put on the wall. It was about a foot too big, so he trimmed 6 inches from the top and bottom, so we'll just have to teach our son that there is a North and South pole!

He's been moving around so much lately--especially at night. We can actually see him moving arms and legs about which has been exciting--except when I'm trying to sleep.

Monday morning I head to the doctor again. Starting in early December I'll have bi-weekly appointments.