Full term, full moon.

37 weeks! Which means the bean is no longer a premmie, but a fully grown little sprout free to make an appearance any day now. Ho-ly cow.

I finished work yesterday, and have never seen my desk look so clean. Who knew I was living amidst so much crap that just needed to go into the recycling. The strangest part was actually the day before I left, when I took down all the little postcards and photos and pictures that had made their way onto my walls over the last few years. H is moving in to my spot (the best in the office, in my opinion) and it was weird to sit there surrounded by freshly beige walls and realise it was really happening. It's exciting, though. The girls organised a baby shower and there is a slab of Brunetti's mud cake in our fridge and a pile of cot linen washed and ready to go in the bean's room. A lovely bunch of flowers accompanied me home on the last train ride yesterday afternoon. It's done. No more work for a year. It makes me very happy.

So now in theory there are three weeks of waiting. Being calm, relaxing, getting a few little things done. And then baby! I'm ready, I think. I feel good about it all. The balance in my head is nicely arranged between knowing it's going to be the most intensely hardcore experience of my life, and being quietly zen about it. Whatever it brings, I can get through it. Even if it's the most horrible 12 (or 24 or 48) hours I've ever known, those hours won't last forever. And at the end of it all - a new beginning. Oooh, excitement. Who are you, little bean?

The other night I was reading in bed, waiting for The Boy to come home, and my belly glowed yellow and full in the lamplight...

Three dozen kinds of love.

Having moaned about Miranda Kerr and her skinny preggo body a while ago, I saw the picture that's been plastered everywhere of her and her tiny baby, and oh my, all is forgiven. She looks so happy and dozy and in love with her child, and despite the fact that I've never heard her open her mouth (and I don't have any particular interest in her life), I have decided she is all right after all. I'm sure she'll be pleased to know.

In other news, I cleaned the bathroom sink with my toothbrush before I went to bed the other night. Thoroughly delighted at the gleaming lacquer, I failed to realise that my extreme nesting would result in no way to brush my teeth the next morning. Ugh, milk-mouth. I hate it. But a few hours of mank was well worth the satisfaction of a clean sink (which will persist only until The Boy next shaves. And then he will feel the wrath of the pregnant lady).

This week has been a bit slower and easier than the last one at work, but I am TIRED now. The Bean attempted a Riverdance impersonation at 4.30am yesterday, and while it is charming (and naturally the child is gifted and will of course appear as a prodigy in the first available series of 'So You Think You Can Dance' after it arrives), I can't be doing the insomnia and the 9-5 for much longer. I was a total zombie at work after that. 4 more days and I can crawl back into bed after the food out/food in/kitten out/baby up routine that seems to be happening at about 6.30 these days. Bring it.

The baby shower was lovely, and populated by people who all knew at least one other person and who came with extraordinary gifts and good wishes and love. For the first time in a week, the sky was blue and not a drop of rain fell the whole afternoon. Ing took some lovely photos of the inner circle, and tiny Molly is just as darling in real life as she is on Facebook.

Oh yes, and Anna had a birthday party. I wore bananas, and danced to the Squirrel Nut Zippers at 1am with my love. We realised that it was exactly 10 years ago that we first danced to those tunes together at another birthday of A's. That was the beginning of it all, really, and neither of us had worked it out until someone else mentioned it. It was some kind of magic to find ourselves with those same people a decade on, now with rings on our fingers and a baby in my belly. A kind of unexpected anniversary, that somehow made me a hundred times happier than the arbitrarily-chosen wedding date bizzo of a couple of months ago. There were so many ways that we might not have found each other, and yet we did, and we are each other's Ones and it is wonderful.

Also, with scant regard for the dire financial situation we will shortly find ourselves in, I bought an iPhone yesterday. Wowsers, I love the future. What the hell took me so long?

34, 35...

34 weeks passed in a rush of holidays and farm work and trips to Ikea, and I went back to work on Monday very relaxed and calm and ready to count down the days until I'm done. Ugh. And then all hell broke loose. Suddenly people seemed to realise that I am actually leaving, really quite soon, and the things I have been trying to get them to implement for MONTHS are now pretty urgent indeed. I haven't left the building before 6 at all yet this week. (And this whole place is routinely a ghost town by 5.02 each night, so it's not like I've become a victim of an insidious overtime culture or anything.) Still. 9 more days once this one has finished. And the load has eased this morning to the extent where I can actually contemplate blogging at work, so that's something.

The Bean's room looks like it might belong to a baby now, rather than a very well-read hobo, and there is only minimal preparation left to do. The amount of crap that has left our little flat via the recycling or the op shop or the farm is absolutely unprecedented. Why have we been carrying that shit around all these years? Everything feels much less cluttered and more organised and about as close to minimalist as you're ever going to see me get (which isn't all that close... but for a hoarder, things are looking pretty freakin' sparse). We still need a cot mattress and a car seat, but we're hoping some baby shower gift vouchers will ease the burden of purchasing them, so we're holding off until after Sunday. I think maybe we're going to need some sort of moses basket set-up as well, because I'm not keen on having the baby in the bed for longer than a few weeks, but I also don't fancy banishing my tiny bean to their own room straight away.

It'll be 35 weeks tomorrow, which means in a fortnight, the bean will be considered fully cooked, and could legitimately make an entrance without being a premmie! Oh my goodness. I guess it still could be 7 weeks, if we go late, but wow. It's getting down to the wire. Don't know if we're up to the engaged stage of things, but bubs is definitely head down (and not at all restricted by the lack of space. Hey Zeus, will this kid ever sleep?) We've been to all our classes, and have spent the last couple of nights writing up our birth plan. Actually, The Boy did most of that. Man is INVOLVED, man. I feel pretty good about it all. Not at that point of being physically over it yet (although being at work has definitely been harder than swanning about at home), but pretty well mentally prepared, I think.

There is lots about everyday things that I think I'll write here, but when I come to it, I can't be bothered. So no details about drinking mango smoothies or vacuuming at 10.30 at night, or feeling a bit like I might need to eat more iron. Just a little note about the eerie morning light that is more like winter than high summer, and the humidity that smacks me in the face like a wet flannel every time I go outside. It hasn't stopped raining for DAYS and if it wasn't for the fact that Queensland is basically underwater, I'd say it was like living in Rockhampton. So instead I'll go for Singapore. Driving home from the hospital last night with the windows down and the smells of Asian restaurants drifting up from Southbank as we sped through the neon lights of the bridge, I shut my eyes and could have been in sweet Saigon.

2011. The Year of The Bean.

The Boy has gone for coffee and I'm in my PJs at 1 pm, listening to Arcade Fire come drifting down through the ceiling.

Last night was spent with the loveliest people we know, eating a feast of epic grandeur and drinking like grown-ups instead of 20-year-olds. (For me, Virgin Marys. Yummo.)

People are beside themselves with the idea of the tiny human we're going to meet in a couple of months. I am so in love that ridiculous tears stream down my face when I catch a glimpse over The Boy's shoulder of the little nose in the ultrasound screenshot we have on the fridge.

This time last year we were on a plane bound for Tokyo. That was a great adventure, but I was utterly content to wake up in our bed this morning. A new year, a new life, a new era.