Natalie Jean - The Final Addition to the Burk Household

Here she is - child #4, the end of the Burk baby saga - Natalie Jean! Becoming pregnant with Natalie was a true lesson in being careful what you wish for. I felt the need to add a 4th child to our family by adopting one from the Ukraine (didn't really want to go thru another pregnancy) and within a month of feeling that call I found out I was pregnant! I can not even put into the words what I felt when I found out there was a little one on the way...happiness, shock, anxiety - so many thoughts rolled up into one! I remember one particular doctor's appointment when he asked if I had any questions...."Yes, I do. What am I supposed to do with four children?" (Sounds like a reasonable question, doesn't it?) Being a 37 year old doc with 5 kids of his own at home, he gave me a piece of advice that made the angels in my own little personal heaven sing....."Don't worry about it, any amount of kids over 3 is chaos anyway. You're gonna be yelling alot anyway, so you just have one more name to remember while you're yelling - no big deal." Ok, so therapist he is not, but my god did I feel a whole lot better when he told me that!

The pregnancy and delivery with Natalie was the absolute easiest thing I have ever gone through in my life...gained 11 pounds total and at delivery it was just one push, ladies, and it was done! I truly don't think I even had a "terrible" contraction! (Please don't hate me!) In many ways, though, that was the end of anything being easy with Natalie!

During her first year, Natalie gave us a few scares....at 8 days old we found out that she would not tolerate milk or soy-based formulas so we had to put her on a prescription-based formula that was from then on referred to at our house as "liquid gold" due to the cost...and she remained on that until her 1st birthday. At 3 months she had a scary bought with RSV that put us in the hospital for 5 days, and from then on caught every respiratory illness known to man. We had the doctors cell number on our speed dial, inaugerated the new children's ER at our hospital, and I'm quite certain that we are the reason our doctor got to put a new addition onto his house! For what we paid in medical bills during Natalie's first year, we could've purchased a small country!


Enough about our sickly first days, though, fast forward to the present and let me paint you a picture of this little lady now. Getting ready to turn 4 in a couple of months, Natalie has been the easiest and the hardest child to raise! She is sugar and spice and everything nice...when things are going her way! Somewhere along the lines, someone must have called her a princess and she took that title to heart. Many times she thinks that the world is her oyster and we are her loyal subjects. She is bossy and crabby and moody and it is just so hard not to love her when she looks at you with those big blue eyes and says "You listen to me!" But as snotty as she can be (and boy, can she be) she also has a loveable side too. She still loves to be "rocked" and will grab her blankie and curl up on my lap in the rocking chair and lay perfectly still while I hum "Rock-A-Bye-Baby" to her. If I am sick, she is the one child that will sit quietly on the bed and be my nurse. She loves to help me cook and is the only child that will put her things away - a miracle in this house! She loves to dress up in pretty clothes and wear the color pink, but is a tomboy just as much as a girly-girl! If she isn't in the house coloring, she is outside running wild on the farm (usually minus an article of clothing such as a shirt). She loves all of our animals....and they all love her (except for the cat, Natalie just terrifies the cat). If she's outside on her own, the first place that she heads is to the barn. She lets the rabbits out and sits and plays with them, gets in with the goats and chases them around, and climbs into the corral and walks the horses, all the while with the dogs following her around as well - she's like the Pied Piper of the Animals! After getting over the initial heart attack of seeing her walking in front of, behind and even under the horses, it is amazing to just sit back and watch her with them. I could walk out to the pasture and those horses will turn their back to me every time; Natalie walks out there and she has 4 horses walking straight toward her. They put their heads down so she can pet them and they nuzzle up against her....she just has a way with them that I can not explain! They are like putty in her hands.

Natalie will begin her first year of Preschool this fall and will have some rude awakenings, I am sure...the first being that the world does not revolve solely around her! She will have to learn to share, will need to work on the attitude, and will have to get used to doing things on a schedule other than her own! But once the teachers get through those first few life lessons with her, they will discover what we see everyday....a beautiful little flower just waiting to bloom. It is bittersweet to be sending the last of the brood to school this year....a rite of passage for both her and for me. It seems that as she is experiencing a lifetime of firsts, I am experiencing a lifetime of lasts. If I think too much about it, it will make me sad, so I just keep pressing on and looking ahead to all that Natalie has to accomplish as she grows. In 14 years, she will be ready to fly away from this nest, but until then, I'm just going to enjoy every crabby, snotty, sweet, and giggly minute with my baby girl. It is way to early to tell what will come about in her life, but when she was born I had a feeling that she would change peoples lives....my feeling has been right so far, because being her mom has completely changed mine!