The Best Gift of All!

We're adding more monkeys to the Vlach zoo! We are beside ourselves with joy to announce that we're expecting our third child mid-June. So now, we're officially the Vlach-Tastic Four-and-a-Third.

Madeline is enchanted. She asks me all sorts of questions about when the new baby is going to "hatch" -- the best way I can explain it to her is that she'll have a new brother or sister when we get to go swimming again in our neighborhood pool. And she is hatching all sorts of babies herself -- she has set up a hospital in Rob's office and carries her newborn baby dolls around in their carriage (a bag we carry library books in). She burps them, nurses them and puts them to bed -- there are parts of the day when we all have to whisper because the new baby is sleeping. Watching all that....well, I'm enchanted too. The other day, Madeline drew a mommy with a baby in her tummy. While she's sure it's a girl, we're trying to set the stage early that it could be a little brother too. She loves to tickle my belly, then listen to see if she can hear the baby inside me giggling.

Charlie has no idea what's about to hit him, but he gets really excited whenever anyone else gets excited, so he happily kisses my belly when he sees Madeline roll up my shirt. Today, he got into the wrapped gifts under the Christmas tree (it was the sound of paper tearing that drew me from the kitchen); he had opened his copy of I'm a Big Brother and ripped two pages out. We'll take it as a two-year-old boy's sign of his growing anticipation.

We feel so blessed that our family is growing, and that our children will have another best friend to throw into the ring. Thankfully, I'm never sick during my pregnancies. But the first trimester exhaustion with two young children was staggering -- I felt like I'd taken an imaginary dose of Tylenol PM and I was doing everything wearing a snow suit. Underwater. With weights on my arms and legs. I would lie Madeline and Charlie down for their naps, and collapse on my bed across the hall face first. We ate more frozen pizzas in the last three months than Dr. Oz would recommend. But I'm feeling my energy surge back just in time for the holidays. We plan to not find out the gender, just like we did with Charlie. That moment in the delivery room was so incredible that we can't wait to repeat it.

We have so much to celebrate this year, and we are simply overcome and infinitely humbled by how grateful we feel.