I have been busy lately and have put off the picture of my belly which I MEANT to take at 28 weeks, and now I'm almost 31 weeks, so you're missing a few weeks of belly growth. Or should I say, we're jumping ahead to show belly growth. Anyway, I'm officially past the 7.5 month point, and feeling every second of being pregnant.

Don't get me wrong - it's truly fantastic to be pregnant. It's just that it adds a dimension to you that you can't fully anticipate until you're smack dab in the middle of it. Like how you can get so irritated within a fraction of a second at things that normally you'd let roll off your back. Or how you find yourself panting to breathe while simply rolling the vacuum across the floor. Or how you don't want to be around anybody cause it's just too exhausting to expend any more energy.

Sometimes I feel as though I participate in life from behind a screen. Like part of me is continuing on like normal or trying to be normal while there's this huge part of me that has turned completely inward and is just focusing on growing this baby, staying healthy, being a mommy, with no time for small talk or casual conversations or anyone outside my little immediate bubble: Kyle and Brooklyn. I feel that strange sensation so much more intensely this time.

I guess it makes sense that something so powerful and intense should change you, should affect you, should rock your world a little. Not only is there another human being developing in my body, but my own body is expanding its capacity to do everything - support another life, pump twice as much blood through my veins, loosening my joints and bones, things that I remember studying in nursing school with a sense of shock and awe. Pregnancy is simply incredible. That it can be done at all. That we are created to do it, as women. I feel every iota of the privilege of it and treasure every second, even those when I'm gasping for breath or pushing little elbows down from my ribs, or lifting the tiny feet off my bladder. I'm also thinking the whole time, "I can't wait to meet you little one...."