Preparing for life with a newborn

Recently Michael has decided that we need to prepare for life with a newborn. To be honest I haven't done much to prepare for Grace beyond pick out her name and pin a bunch of great project ideas that will probably never happen. I think I'm still in denial, I don't want to go too far down the girl road only to find out at 32 weeks (or whenever that last ultrasound is scheduled) that oops we missed something and it's a boy. I'm really crossing my fingers that Brian made them check enough and that in fact something is missing and she's really a she. Anyway so we haven't done much to prepare. Add to that the fact that there are two other kids, jobs, and you know regular life we haven't prepared that much- we have 12 weeks. But Michael has taken it upon himself to help us prepare. He has started waking up every 3-4 hours at night so we get in the swing of never really getting all the way back to sleep. And when he does wake up he's super rational (or not), so it's a little bit like dealing with a newborn, you can't tell exactly what they need, they are really upset, the more you try and help them the more upset they become and the more flustered you become, because let's be honest it's 3am and it was a very long day. So that's pretty awesome. He's also decided to need something... pretty much constantly. This is also great practice for a newborn, because sometimes they do need something constantly. And he is super great at changing his mind as soon as you get him the requested item. You know sorta like a newborn that needed a diaper change and then immediately has a blowout before you can even move them from the changing table.  And to be honest after Baby Zach we need the practice, Zach was pretty low maintenance as far as a newborn went, he needed a clean diaper, a full tummy, a pacifier, and to sleep. He didn't really need to be held all the time, but he did need something to smother himself, and we got out of the practice of a needy newborn. Lucky for us Michael is retraining us. He is doing an excellent job! I am thinking in about 12 weeks we will be totally ready to handle Grace- diaper check, food check, no sleep ever check! Give it another week and our nerves and patience will be totally shot... sorta like how it will be around our house mid June.