This morning I woke up as though someone had given me a shot of adrenaline. As I lay awake for a few moments, I realized that the baby had the hiccups (in utero, of course). I just lay there as my belly seemed to fidget in and out, in and out, in perfect rhythm.

As time progressed, I started focusing on my heart beat over the hiccups. When some people say that their heart was like a kettle drum, they're simply emphasizing that they couldn't really focus on anything else. That's how this was to me. I chose to focus on the fast tempo of my heart over the slow, rhythmic sound of the baby's hiccups. I thought, for whatever reason, it would help my heartbeat slow down and put us both to sleep.

After twenty minutes of hiccups (I kept time via my phone), the baby was as restless as I was. For an hour he rolled and stretched and seemed to just be moving to get my attention. It's so strange at this point that I can actually feel where an elbow, or knee, or maybe a foot or hand is and push it so it goes back "into place"... or at least a place that's a little more comfortable for me. He didn't like that much. He began moving with more vigor. Finally, around 5 am (two hours after waking up to hiccups), I got out of bed.

I don't know why I had so much energy, or how I'm managing to keep my eyes open now. My mind is full of a to-do list a mile long that I feel like simply must be done. Nesting syndrome, maybe? Or just Restless Syndrome? Either way it's kind of driving me crazy. It's just like yesterday afternoon when all I wanted to do was work on SOMETHING, but I didn't want to work on anything around the house. The kitchen needs to be cleaned, the whole apartment needs to be vacuumed, there's still some laundry left over from Tuesday (my laundry day) that needs to be folded... there's a lot to do, especially since I have a friend visiting tomorrow. But yesterday none of that seemed important. What was important? Looking towards the future and coming up with some pretty rockin' ideas of things I want to do with my life.

These past 24 hours or so I've had many revelations. For years I thought I wanted to be a stay at home mom. Just a housewife and mother living up the 1950s in the 2000s. Part of me still wants that. However, I want to be a mom that still does something so my children don't look at me like I was "just a mom".

I hate when people say that. My mom, for example, was a stay at home mom and still is to my little sister who is now a senior in high school. I think she is the most amazing woman. Many things that she has wanted to do her whole life she's now just really putting time into pursuing. I admire her so much for that. She's still doing what she wants to do, she just delayed it for her kids. She's so selfless.

So, not saying that I don't want to be like my mother. What I'm saying is I want to combine my mother with the now-idea of a "working mom" and do something not-so-traditional and show my kids that parenthood always comes first, but that doesn't mean that's all I did. My husband and I are very young, and this baby was quite a surprise. We are beyond thrilled and so READY to be parents (so ready that this morning I also was doing squats in an attempt to coach the baby out... I did not succeed). But, I want to use my "young energy" while I still can to take some risks, do some crazy things, and hopefully have them turn out. If not... that's life.

No worries. I'm not going to go sky diving or jump off a cliff or do something that will possibly leave my child without a mother. I'm talking about "safer" options. Still, they're options. What are they? I have no idea. I just hope God puts them before me within the next few years and I'm able to run with them.

This is what I get for not sleeping and still feeling like I'm on a sugar high.