A few pics of our FOUR kids!

Hard to even believe it when I type it....here are some photos of our FOUR kiddos! Baby and I came home from the hospital Friday and so far, so good. He has 3 very interested big siblings who have been incredibly sweet and gentle so far. No signs of jealousy yet! We've tried to make everything about the process positive and exciting. Sean thinks the whole thing is pretty cool, Luke is a bit afraid that he will break Ryan thus a little hesitant around him, and Charlotte is every bit the nurturing little Mommy. So cute!!!

A few Christmas photos

Hi all...once again not a long post in terms of an update, but thought I'd post a few holiday photos. Since I wasn't able to travel at 37 weeks pregnant, family came to us...Nana and Papa, Aunt Laura and cousin Evan, and my Aunt Pam with her son Thomas. The biggest news is that it looks like I will make it to my scheduled c-section this coming Tuesday, January 5 and Baby Burke will join us then! So here are the final photos of the kiddos before we expand to a family of 6...wow. Looks like I also need to be renaming the blog soon to something that encompasses all of us!

Playing in the snow...they begged me for days before I found the energy to round up all the gear, get them dressed and take them out! :-) But they loved it, so it was well worth it.

With cousin Evan and 2nd cousin Thomas, all in their new pajamas from Nana and Papa!

Making cookies for Santa (and eating a few too!)

Mommy and Baby Burke...he was so considerate not to arrive early so that I wouldn't be stuck in the hospital on Christmas!

Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas from the Burkes! As you can see below, everyone decided Santa is an okay guy this year and willingly sat on his lap! This was taken at our annual Santa Breakfast put on by my Moms of Multiples club. Since Baby Boy Burke is due VERY soon (we have a scheduled c-section set for January 5), I'm not going to attempt to get Christmas cards out, but rather send out a Happy New Year/Baby Announcement in January. Much love, a Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to all!

Daddy's Little Republican

Recently at teacher conferences Charlotte's preschool teacher commented how well she had memorized the Pledge of Allegience that they were learning in class. When I asked her to do it at home, I was stunned! And Daddy, well, it brought tears to his eyes. So, here it is! Enjoy:

One of those days...

I know I will laugh, hard, about this someday. But for now, I want to capture this morning's events so that 10 or 12 years down the road when I have teenagers and I'm worrying about "bigger" problems, I'll remember why having three 3-year olds is so hard!

6am: Alarm goes off. Mommy is 27 weeks pregnant and tired. Pushes snooze button against better judgement. Note/reminder to self: It's always better to get up early and be prepared for the day! Finally get up at 6:30. Get dressed in workout clothes in order to go to mommy exercise class while kids are at preschool.

7am: Kids are awake and chatting. Time to go in and start the day, and get ready for preschool. One child (who shall remain nameless) has woken up Grouchy. I help the other two kids with potty, getting dressed, etc. while Grouchy kid throws a fit about what clothes have been laid out and refuses to go potty. Continues to throw fit as other two head downstairs to play. I tell Grouchy to go potty when he/she is ready and meet us downstairs. Sceams louder.

7:15 a.m.: Go back upstairs to get laundry out of dryer. Grouchy has made it to the bathroom but has waited so long that he/she pees all over floor instead of in the toilet (same child did this yesterday, by the way). Mommy not happy. Cleans up floor and child. Finally we all make it downstairs.

8:00 a.m.: Seemingly past the worst of it. Grouchy had a few choice moments during breakfast but overall not too bad. Grouchy mentions that he/she peed "a little drop" in underpants. I ask child to go potty to make sure it's all out, but get a flat out, defiant refusal.

8:10 a.m.: Mommy trying to clean up breakfast, empty dishwasher, get school bags and kids ready to head out the door in 30 minutes. Grouchy, sitting on the couch with a book, says, "Uh oh, mommy, I go pee pee!" No, no, no, please....yes, Grouchy has peed, a lot, directly on couch cushion. Mommy not happy, yells a little bit this time. Ugh. Mommy stops all other activity to clean up child and try to clean couch cushion.

8:35 a.m.: We're officially running late. Scramble to finish getting school bags ready and get everyone in socks, shoes, coats and in the car with minimal cooperation. I'm told by one child that I need to talk nicely. Obviously the morning's events are getting to me.

8:50 a.m.: Finally back out of driveway, leaving the house in shambles. So late. This is not enough time to get to school, have everyone go potty when we get there (still a necessary step at this point), and to my exercise class by 9:15. Going to try anyway!

9:00 a.m.: Arrive at school. Open door to let everyone out and realize I've forgotten backpacks at home. NO WAY. This is not happening. If I had gotten up when the alarm went off the bags would have been ready and in the car before we left. Decide to get everyone inside and beg teacher to send home artwork, school notes, etc in a Target bag or something so I don't have to run home for backpacks.

9:05 a.m.: Everyone's gone potty and we're headed to classroom. Charlotte mentions her pants are wet. What? I look and sure enough, she peed partially in the toilet, partially down the back of her pants. This can't be happening. And I have no backpack with spare clothes to change her. Get to classroom, and teacher says she doesn't have enough spare clothes to change her, so I must run home and get backpacks after all.

9:10 a.m.: Head home, in tears, for backpacks and a change of pants for Charlotte. Needless to say, I never made it to my exercise class.

Even in typing this, I had to laugh, a little. I realize no one is sick or hurt. We have a roof over our head (a very nice one) and food on our table. But in the moment you think, "Seriously?! Can this be happening? Why does this have to be so hard?" The primary theme of the morning has been pee, and as you can see we're technically potty trained but things are far from smooth in that department. I dream of the day when the kids will just head to the bathroom, do their business and come back out without any involvement from me. Feels like a long way off!

I love my kids. Adore them!!! We have many wonderful moments and lots of great days. But three 3-year olds while pregnant with a 4th can be tough. I need to remember this when they're 15, sassy and I'm dreaming of the "good old days." Parenting is a challenge at any age.

Potty Training Pandemoneum

So that time had come....preschool starts in September and well, the mandate is that children must be fully potty trained to attend. Given that we barely make the age cut-off (by a day!) and will just have turned three, the kids are by far the youngest in the class, I knew that this could be a big undertaking. I read books, researched on the internet, solicited the input of fellow mom friends who've been there, done that, and we made a plan. I had a fairly clear idea of who was really ready and who I would be sort of "forcing" into this, but given our commitment to preschool we didn't have much choice. My suspicions were right and without "outing" any one kid I will say we had one who completely rose to the challenge and was nearly 100% trained in about 4-5 days (even naps and nighttime!)....one who was doing pretty well but had a fear of doing #2 on the potty, which we eventually found a way to overcome....and one who initially just didn't seem to get it AT ALL. Well, 2 very messy weeks later (both figuratively and literally), I am so pleased to report that all are spending their days in big kid underpants and we've even started venturing out into public again, albeit with lots of visits to public restrooms which its own harrowing adventure. We're averaging one accident a day (total, not per kid!) and for now I'm happy with that and so proud of my big kids!

Jeff and I are exhausted...potty training 3 kids at one time requires a lot of supervision (not much time for anything else) and a lot of trips back and forth to the bathroom to empty potty chairs. I hate potty chairs. They are messy and I've stooped over to pick one up probably dozens, maybe hundreds, of times in the last few weeks. We will be converting to the regular toilet with an adaptor as soon as the never-ending potty parade finally ends. Right now there's a lot of monkey-see, monkey-do where one kids announces they need to go, the others follow and we've got three on their potties at one time. No good way to manage that traffic with one toilet on the main level. They're also motivated to "perform" in order to earn a mini M&M or marshmallow for their efforts.

Just like every other new skill, some day this will be no big deal. For now I'll just try to enjoy how sweet each of them is when they have that look of pride and accomplishment when they are successful each day.

God's big plans

Most people know that Jeff and I struggled with infertility for a very long time before we were finally successful in starting our family. Nearly five years passed from the time we began trying to conceive until Sean, Luke and Charlotte arrived in August of 2006. There were many, many times I prayed fervently to God for just one baby. I made so many "deals" with him about what I would do to honor Him if he would bless us with a child! That I would be happy and content with that one child if that's the only child we had. I also remember, very vividly, an email exchange I had with a friend once during the process of one of our many procedures. I don't still have the email so I can't refer to it exactly, but to paraphrase I remember writing, "I don't know what it is, but God has a plan for us. Some days it's hard to understand why this painful and difficult journey is necessary. But nevertheless, I believe God has a plan bigger and better than anything we can imagine for ourselves and someday this will all make sense..."

Well THAT was an understatement! Not only do we have three beautiful, healthy children to raise, love and call our own, but we are expecting again. Yes, baby #4 is on the way!!! No this is not a "miracle" pregnancy that we conceived naturally. We had a few remaining embryos frozen from our IVF cycle that resulted in the triplets. After my hernia surgery last year and some long, difficult conversations Jeff and I decided our family would be complete, but that we couldn't bring ourselves to dispose of those embryos...we would donate them to another couple to use. As the months passed after my surgery, somehow we just couldn't bring ourselves to initiate the process of donating them. Long story short, earlier this year we began consulting with our doctors about doing "natural" embryo transfers (very little medical monitoring and no drugs) to utilize the embryos. They were so accommodating and after a few tries, voila! Here we are.

So, here are a few photos to celebrate. My due date is currently January 13. And yes, it is just one baby this time, we are quite certain! We are already joking this baby does not know how good he/she has it in there. It's got a huge 3-bedroom apartment all to itself!

I couldn't wait for the official blood test, and took one at home the day before. Surprise!!!

An ultrasound at approximately 10 weeks. Baby is looking down, with its back toward the top of the photo.

This was so cool...a 3-D image! We didn't even get this with the triplets. The inexperienced viewer may not see much, but its head is at the top facing left (you can even see an ear forming), and a little arm bud sort of covering its face.

The drought is over!

Okay, okay, almost 6 months is a LONG time to go without a new post to the blog. Age 2 has been far more challenging (and exhausting) than I ever thought possible. In my defense, from basically early January through late March we had long stretch of illness, either the kids, Jeff and I, or all of us. It was a long, painful winter. And the spring, an unusually cool and rainy one, hasn't been much easier. So, I'm going to just write off those months and start clean!

All I will say about that time frame is looking back on it I am simply amazed at the growth and change in the kids from the time they turned 2 until now. The level of comprehension, expressive language and general abilities (i.e. using untensils, getting themselves dressed, etc) has grown in leaps and bounds. They are truly little people now!

So, I'm sure I have tons of cute pictures from recent months that I should post, but for now I'm just going to share some from our first big family vacation (a plane trip, no less!) to San Diego. We visited Jeff's brother Greg and his family and had a wonderful time. It took us no less than a week to recover though! We were ALL pooped. Enjoy the pics!

Here were are...2 adults, three 2-year olds, 3 carseats, a stroller and 2 carryons! Needless to say we attracted a few onlookers at the airport. That's a carseat strapped to Jeff's back. Yes, we were mules!

The kiddos playing in cousin Riley's treehouse!

On the kiddie train at Balboa Park.

This was one of our first exhibits at SeaWorld and they were engrossed by the Beluga whale!

Touching the starfish at the Tide Pool...wow!!!

The Shamu show...need I say more?

On the Elmo ride in the Sesame Street section of Sea World. I think I would call this the kids' first roller coaster ride!

In beautiful La Jolla

Buried and loving it!!!

Dippin' those toes in the water and throwing rocks!

Awww...a daddy/daughter moment...

It was a long, hard day at the beach for Sean...

Making the best of it

Well, the winter storms have bungled our Christmas travel plans, but we're making the best of it! Daddy and the kiddos have been outside playing in the snow for over an hour this morning and show no signs of slowing down. Should be a good nap this afternoon!!! Merry Christmas, everyone.

Winter Wonderland

This isn't even close to everything I have to post, but I'll have to go back and do some retroactive posts later. We had a big dump of snow last night and a free morning today, so I took the kids out for a romp in it. It took me about 40 minutes to get everyone (including myself!) ready, but we stayed outside for almost an hour, so I'll consider it worth it. We'd had one previous snow and I was being hounded to go out and make a snowman! Unfortunately this snow was a little too icy to make a snowman, but they had a blast anyway. I had no camera handy to take a shot while we were outside (argh!), but here's a shot of everything drying off (I know, boring):

Okay, here are couple more interestng photos. We've reached the age of recognition of Santa, but not quite the full understanding of who he is and what he does. In any case, we've visited him twice. The first was at my triplet group's Santa Breakfast, and was a bonified disaster. The photo is a little blurry because it was taken in a serious hurry in order to not permanently scar the trio. The second photo was taken at the mall, on a whim. We walked by to take a look and Sean insisted on sitting on his lap, to my complete surprise. Charlotte was lukewarm on the idea, and Luke wanted no part of it. Since there was no line, I figured nothing lost if it was a repeat disaster. In order to get Luke to even remotely cooperate, I had to be in the photo and let him sit with me...a tall order since we had gone to my stroller exercise class and mommy is in her workout clothes and not exactly photo ready!!! I've added a photo of the family at the Santa Breakfast, a little more calm at the other end of the room in front of the Christmas tree. If you've never met these guys or have only seen them a few times, you'll have to take my word for it that they are a lot more animated and personable than the photos I often post suggest. Getting a photo of all three, looking at the camera, and not crying is a challenge, let alone trying to get them all to smile at the same time. At least you can see their cute outfits! Merry Christmas...