It’s that time again: time to sign up for NaBloPoMo. You know, National Blog Posting Month. Sign up now, post every day in November (yes, including weekends). That’s it!

It’s what makes November exciting for those of us too lazy to tackle NaNoWriMo. Or for those of us who don’t write fiction for NaNoWriMo. (Though if you do, go ahead and sign up for NaNo, too. What have you got to lose? Except sleep?)

Once you’ve signed up, invite me to be your friend. Go on, do it. I’ve been scrolling through the profiles checking for bloggers I know, but you know what? I don’t know what most of you look like. And even if I think I do, you could have taken a new picture or not posted a picture or… or I just haven’t found you yet. There are getting to be a lot of pictures to scroll through, and I’m getting lazy.

Also? Why does everyone on the internet have one of only about six names? I think there are 873 Sarahs signed up already. That’s curious. Isn’t it? No? Oh, all right. Just go sign up already, would you?

Dane’s sick. I’m not in labor. Things are not going according to plan around here.

You have a newborn. You’re still in your bathrobe and slippers at four o’clock in the afternoon, and spit-up graces your shoulder. There are dishes in the sink, unopened mail piled up on the kitchen table, untouched library books in a stack on the coffee table. You haven’t thought about making dinner; you can’t remember what you ate for lunch. What did you do all day?

What Mothers Do: Especially When it Looks Like Nothing tackles the question head-on, showing how all those mothering tasks that don’t seem to add up to much are crucial for both baby’s and mom’s development in their new relationship.

It’s a thoughtful and thought-provoking read, so I wouldn’t hand it to a bleary-eyed, sleep-deprived mom of a brand new baby. But a first-time mom who’s regained her capacity to read? Or a studious, read-ahead-type mom-to-be? I’d press this book on them in a heartbeat.

While the author is careful not to tell readers how to mother, she is justifying certain mothering techniques and not others; if you don’t choose to comfort your baby on demand, for example, or to be instantly interruptible when your baby wakes up from naptime, you may come away feeling less than supported by this explanation of how mothering works. This is my mothering style, though, so I hung on her every word.

I was especially interested in the section on language; why do we have words for bad parenting, but not good? For example: a parent can protect their child too little (neglect) or too much (overprotective), but what’s the word for protecting your child the right amount? Anybody want to coin new phrases?

For more on What Mothers Do, visit MotherTalk.

Full disclosure: I received a free review copy of this book, as well as a small honorarium from MotherTalk for participating in this blog book tour.

And…Anjali wins my copy of February Flowers!

Anjali, send me your mailing address and I’ll get it out to you right away– especially if there’s still no baby here tomorrow!

Quote of the day, courtesy of Owen:

“Let’s ask Daddy is we can name the baby Porcupine.” [Thoughtful pause.] “Or just Pork.”

Yeah, ask Daddy. Because Mommy’s so unreasonable about these things.

Every pregnancy, I swear I’m not going to do this.

Every time, I think I finally understand that the baby will come when it’s ready to come. I think I’ll be content to Just Wait. And then we get to the last week or so and I start thinking, Great God in Heaven, what do I need to do to convince this baby to COME OUT NOW? (He hasn’t answered me yet.)

I get all superstitious and decide that the baby is obviously waiting to be born until I’ve cleaned all the baseboards. Or washed the cabinet faces. Or found a new dresser for the kids’ clothes. So I do all those things and discover that, nope! That wasn’t what the baby was waiting for! And then I look around for what ELSE might be holding up the proceedings.

I’m running out of projects. And I don’t especially seem to be on the cusp of labor.

So today my midwives gave me a list of Things to Try. (And you already know, of course, that I’m relating this for your amusement only—I am not dispensing medical advice here. Not that you would ever TAKE medical advice from a stranger over the internet, right? Right. That’s what I thought.)

- There’s the obvious: Have Lots of Sex. Which is great advice. But as it turns out, Dane does have to go to work every once in a while, so we need more suggestions than that.

- Eat balsamic vinegar. And watercress. And walnuts. I don’t think all at the same time.

- Massage acupressure points. This sounds good. Now, if I could just find a free masseuse to follow me around all day long…

- Just Wait. Babies always do come…eventually.

How you spent the weekend, if you are my Not Yet Ready To Be Born Baby: kicking and grooving and hiccupping, and possibly outgrowing your living quarters.

How you spent the weekend, if you are me: Organizing! Recycling! Throwing stuff away! And I’m not even close to done, though I may give up very very soon. Even if it is fun to make Dane check out the newly-organized hall closet shelves just to hear him say: “Behold, the power of nesting.”

And then there was Owen, who, watching me scrub the walls, proclaimed: “It’s magic! There are no more crayon marks!”

Ah, yes. But was it magic that caused the walls to be clean, or magic that caused me to clean them?

Either Audrey is getting more nuanced in her facial expressions, or I am becoming more adept at reading complicated meanings into them. Just now I asked her why she was fussing, and she looked at me as if to say, “I’ve been fussing like this all day, and you’ve only just NOW noticed? What kind of parent are you, anyway?”

I can’t really answer that one, but I CAN tell you that I’m a fairly crappy nester. Really, I’ve botched the whole nesting gig this pregnancy. First there was the being sick thing, which pretty much ate up two weeks—one for being sick, and one for lying around insisting I wasn’t sick anymore, even if I couldn’t eat anything or stand up without seeing stars.

Eventually I was well enough to get up off the couch and say, “I should clean the whole house!” which had perhaps been slightly neglected while I was busy with the throwing up and the moaning. I think I cleared off about two surfaces before collapsing.

But today I’m really, really better! I’ve been able to eat actual food for three days now. I’ve been dressed in Real Clothes (no, yoga pants do not count as Real Clothes) for two days (and not even the same clothes both days). So NOW the house is getting my attention!

Except that I’d rather ignore the prosaic cleaning jobs in favor of the Big Projects. This is kind of how I am all the time, I’m just more into it right now. (And yes, I understand that the tendency to ignore the routine in favor of projects suggests something about my own neuropathy. But I don’t think we need to get into that, now, do we?)

So I dusted the ceiling fan (which involved a trapeze-artist balancing act), but not so much the piano (which, you know, wouldn’t have). I’ve scrubbed 18 gazillion sticky spots off the floor, but haven’t wiped the crumbs off the kitchen counters. That mysterious goo under the high chair? Gone! That pile of laundry on the couch? Staying put! The inside of the trash cupboard door? Clean! The breakfast dishes? Still dirty, in the sink above the trash cupboard!

And now, if you’ll excuse me, I have a pile of baby shirts that require aggressive spot treating. And a pile of white towels that will have to continue waiting to be washed.

Audrey keeps appraising her eighteen-month-old self in the mirror with great consternation, as if to say: “These leggings make my diaper look lumpy.”

I feel like I should start all blog posts, emails, and telephone calls with “NO BABY YET” for the next few days until there’s a baby. (Don’t you like how I optimistically say “days” instead of “weeks,” even though I think it’ll still be a while?) Yeah, there’s no baby here yet.

We do, however, have all our birth supplies really ready to go (I think!), including the kit we had to order from a midwifery supply company, the stuff we had to shop for locally (hydrogen peroxide and rubbing alcohol and baby wipes and… I don’t know, other stuff), and all the things I had to get out of storage and wash (receiving blankets, baby clothes, cloth diapers).

I even checked out a couple of videos from my midwife’s lending library to remind us all of the mechanics of the miracle of birth. And having watched one today, let me just say: I really think my babies’ heads were smaller than that. Or at least this baby’s will be.

And we’ve fielded a number of suggestions for baby names from the kids lately: Honeymoon, Jelly, Peanut, and Kate, to name a few. (Why Kate? I don’t know. And I assume the other three are gender-neutral, though I didn’t specifically ask.) I don’t think we’re going with any of those, but I’ll keep you posted.