The Birkeland Family Blog

I'm 20 weeks pregnant with a baby girl.  If this is a surprise to you it is even a bigger surprise to us.  Brian and I have always rolled our eyes when couples say, "this was a total woops".  Yeah yeah!!!!  "Whatever", we thought.  Well, we now believe in "woops" babies.  This was not planned and totally unexpected.  I will spare you the details, but like Brian likes to say, "we came home with an extra souvenir from Disneyland".  We are now finally being able to admit to ourselves that we have another little one coming to our family. We are now believing this baby is coming to us for our little Emmi.  She has been begging for a little sister since Jack came and ruined her life.  We have kept this whole pregnancy a secret from Emmi because once you let her in on something everyone will know about it.  We wanted the cerclage to go well and my first ultrasound to be cle...

Emmi has finally overcome her fear of water and has learned to kinda sort of swim.  It wasn't an easy process.  In fact, they just pushed her in over and over with her screaming, but after 12 weeks of weekly private lessons she is floating, swimming with head under the water, and jumping off the diving board in the deep end.  She in fact maybe a little too confident in her skills.  Her last day of preschool they went swimming at the Fremont Pool.  She and a friend went out to the deep.  She kept trying to reach for the side of the pool and couldn't reach.  I saw her struggling so I, the mother, go running to get the gaurd to see her and to get her, while two other moms go in fully clothed to save her.  I got mother of the year award.