Is this nesting instinct?

I've always had trouble differentiating my normal level of wanting to get things accomplished from the overdrive version most often referred to as the "nesting instinct." The nesting instinct is supposed to be where a pregnant Mom starts to be compulsive about getting things ready before a baby comes. For some women it occurs as late as when they begin labor. For me, I think it is not much different from my normal behavior where I'm planning ahead before I'm even pregnant.

This past week, however, has been pretty busy and I've begun to wonder if I'm pushing the limits of sanity. Over last weekend, we finished up our taxes and I sent them out as soon as I could. We've been doing schoolwork, much to the Pillowfight Fairy's dislike. We've finished our math curriculum and grammar curriculum and as a result, I'm speeding up our history lessons to get as many of them in as possible before the baby comes. The Fairy told me today that she thinks a better schedule would be school on Saturday and Sunday and the rest of the week off. She has a bad case of spring fever. I've been staying up late nearly every night working on next year's curriculum, not just for the Fairy but for the Adrenaline Junkie too. Last night I took the time to do some much needed mending. Yesterday, was Tim's day off and I scheduled us for some new family pictures, which took a big chunk of the morning. (It was about time, the last time we had family pictures made was nearly three years ago.) So family will be glad to hear that we will have new pictures for them very soon.

Today felt like a bit of a marathon. I added a trip to Target to return merchandise to my usual trip to get groceries. By the time I got home, unloaded the groceries, and put them away, it was lunch time. After lunch we all went outside to play and I decided to go ahead and weed the garden. Now our garden is relatively small (compared to what it could be). I've only planted about a third of my garden area this time. But, I've neglected it a bit and it has gotten rather weedy. Those of you who have seen me in person lately know that I am... ahem... really big right now. At nearly eight months pregnant, I make people nervous that I'm going to have the baby any moment. Perfect strangers come up to me and ask if I need help, when I'm doing what to me are perfectly normal things (like lifting my two year old out of his stroller and into a car seat). I have a definite waddle when I walk. I can't move quickly or easily. Watching me get up or down is either painful or comical to watch (or both). But yet, I determined to weed my garden. Now, I do have a nice long handle cultivator that I could use to get between my rows. But, I needed to get the weeds out where they are growing alongside my veggies. I needed to do close work. How in the world was I going to do that? The garden cart didn't have enough room to be used since I have narrow and close rows. I couldn't stand and bend over long enough to make much progress (I did that a few weeks ago and I wouldn't be able to do that again). Kneeling would be impossible, I would need a rescue to get me back up. I finally found a way. We have some plastic stack able patio chairs. With a little experimentation I discovered that if I place one just right, the legs of the chair just fit within two neighboring troughs. I could place my chair so that I could sit in the garden with each foot in a trough and a row directly in front of me. If I sat at the front edge of the chair, I could pivot so that I could reach one row to the left, and one row to the right as well as weed the one in front of me. I wasn't too high to reach the ground, and I wasn't so low that I had trouble getting up. It worked. So I spent the next three hours weeding the garden. As a result, I know what veggies are actually growing in half of my garden. The other half of the garden will have to wait for another time. I exhausted myself.

So what am I growing? Well, the snow peas are doing fairly well and are about eight to ten inches high. I found one lone plant of broccoli, five or six cabbages (better than my one cabbage last year), a few celery seedlings that are barely visible, and a dozen or so onions. It looks pretty pathetic. In the half of the garden that hasn't been weeded yet, there should be carrots, parsley, spinach, and two kinds of lettuce. Among the profuse weeds I have so far only identified a few bits of carrot leaf and one spinach. I haven't seen one lettuce despite the fact that I planted three rows of them. It doesn't look like our garden is doing that well this year. Our fruit trees and other berries seem more promising (except that we seem to have a dying cherry tree). Also our recently planted flowers and bushes around the patio are growing and looking good.

So, it kind of begs the question: Am I going through some kind of extreme nesting instinct? or am I simply off my rocker to be concerned about my gardening at eight months pregnant?