Another one bites the dust. A pair of cords I’d bought second-hand, maternity but too big even for that. When I tried them on (pre-twin news) I could shimmy them clear off my hips and thought Ha! Never. They’ll always be too roomy but at least they’ll be really, really comfy when I’m on the way to the hospital.

The early retirement of the Too-Roomy Cords marks the beginning of the end …of the beginning.

I’ve even had to break out the dreaded nubbly sweater, the only article of clothing left standing at the last pregnancy’s bitter end. After nicknaming it The Hedgehog, Justin made me promise to throw it away. Alas, I didn’t. When I think it's at the bottom of the laundry pile, it takes its two-stroke dirtbike to the store to shoplift bags of jellybeans. After bedtime when I think it's stuffed in a drawer we hear it in the living room, munching on microwave popcorn while watching reruns of The Addams Family.

Its magnetic nubbles trap crumbs and other food droppings so that my belly, thanks to The Hedgehog, is a catalogueable exposé of everything I've eaten in the past week.

I emerged in it a while back and Justin shrieked like a little girl.

These are desperate days. The Great Heaving Mass pops out the bottom of every shirt I own, irrationally social, an upside-down shelf of breeze-exposed beach ball. Even The Hedgehog can’t contain it. My belly has its own MySpace page with a “My L’il Sluggers” explosion ticker, typed IN ALL CAPS WT FLSHING SMILYS :-P AND OMGs AND LOLs AND U GO GRLZ CUZ UR MY BFF HUN HAHAHA!!!!!

I am 27 weeks pregnant. I’ve gained somewhere close to 25 pounds, but my belly already appears around corners four seconds before the rest of me. People say, "Oh! You’re not as big as I thought you’d be," but they forget, I think, just how much farther I have to go. I wonder: when will they start saying, "Oh! You're... you're... oh dammit woman, you're ENORMOUS! Crap, did I just say that out loud? I was all set to tell you that you weren't as big as I thought you'd be, but no... no. I can't do it!"

Two months left… maybe less, maybe more. I still can’t figure it out: is it folly to lust for the end of this pregnancy when the end means two newborns?

Ants in their pants, the both of ‘em — do not rest your gaze on my independently wriggling belly unless you have a strong constitution. They are like pre-pubescent raccoons on a sugar high trapped in a potato sack. This morning, one of them blew a ziebert on the other side of my skin while the other played tetherball with a kidney.

So what's the upside? The 'trapped' bit, to be sure. Even though I'm sporting The Hedgehog for the third day in a row, I sleep through the night and wear underwired bras and smell delicious.

Two months. Precious little time, that is. All the pantless hobbling in the world can’t dilute the inevitability of this runaway train.

Twin and multiple-offspring mamas of all varieties: is it better to be humongously pregnant plus a toddler, or not-pregnant but immersed in newborn-bootcamp plus a toddler? The fact that I can't decide between the two says enough, methinks, about just how much I want to do the funky chicken around a celebratory Hedgehog bonfire and be done with it.