Did you think it was awfully suspicious how, seemingly moments after conceiving, piles of junk mail from Babies R Us and Wal Mart and every other major retailer arrived at your door? Are the digital pregnancy tests rigged up with GPS trackers now or what? We are going to need to be outfitted with the necessary items to keep our baby clothed, clean, fed, and healthy, but while I’m pretty sure I don’t need a (seriously unattractive) matching glider, ottoman, and crib skirt, I’m not entirely sure of which items I really do need within easy reach.

We woke to dark skies and pouring rain on Saturday morning, and my nesting instinct kicked in. Full force. Check out my projects from this past weekend, and share what kinds of nesting activities you've been up to!

While I'm continually frustrated by how hard it can be to find truly natural products — as I wrote in my last post — on the positive side, I have made some progress toward that end.

Here's what I've been able to do so far to make my family's life green-ish:

* I buy organic produce and milk (but I have little control over what I get in restaurants).

* I avoid artificial sweeteners.

* I use organic shampoo, lotions, and soaps that are free of parabens and pthalates. For an article on this that we ran in Parenting, click here. For more information and a list of brands, check out the Environmental Working Group's Skin Deep Cosmetics Database).

And anyone who tells you otherwise, is lying. Here's where I'm coming from:

Over the past several years I've gotten more environmentally conscious — and as more and more studies have come out linking all of our man-made synthetics and plastics to a whole host of conditions including cancer, fertility problems, allergies, asthma, and behavior disorders, I've tried to be as green as I could not only for the planet, but also for my health. For me, that's meant eating organic food as much as possible, avoiding mercury-laden fish, and buying natural cleaning products (brands like Seventh Generation and Shaklee) in lieu of traditional cleaning products with chlorinated bleach. Easy steps to take, right? Right.

I've bought things. I've returned things. I've had two baby showers. Our house has boxes of baby gear in every room, half-opened boxes from recent shipments, bags and boxes wherein I've made some attempts to organize all the stuff, stuff, stuff.

I'm two weeks from my due date. All I do is get bigger and slower, and ask Scott to do more things for me.

"This weekend, we have got to get this stuff organized and put away," I say to him.

Yes, dear.

The last two nights, I have had a new kind of insomnia that involves being wide-awake at 3 a.m., and sleeping fitfully later on in the morning. In addition, today I woke up with a sore throat. So Scott put on his superhero cape and went out into the world to do our errands for us. There was the new rug that needed washing in an industrial size washer at the laundromat, not to mention all our bedding, pillows, etc.; the farmers' market; the grocery store; a stop at a comic book store (a man has needs)...