The Birkeland Family Blog

So do you think to yourself often, "I should have never taught you that"? I am kicking myself for teaching Emmi that GREEN means "GO", and RED means "STOP". Emmi is now in the backseat yelling at me "GO mama, GO, it's GREEN" or "STOP mama it's RED". At first it was considered cute, but now I find myself thinking it is rather annoying. Crap.....I created my own personal back seat driver.

Here is my little Easter Bunny. What a fun Easter weekend. Saturday we hit two egg hunts. Emmi was pretty reluctant to fight for her eggs. She would just stand and watch the other kids take them right from beneath her. I couldn't allow her to come home with nothing in her basket, so I would shove her in front of the eggs so no other kids could get to them. She came home with a smile and some eggs. On the other hand Brian took her out to find eggs at our neighborhood hunt. She came back from the pouring rain with one....yes....uno egg. He didn't help her or fight for her to come back with anything. Then, she opened the one egg to find a piece of hard bubble gum. She looked at me like..."where is the chocolate mom?" Yeah....daddy didn't care if she had nothing in her basket. His words, "she's two she doesn't care". That evening we went up to Grammy Jill's and dyed easter eggs. This year was probably the best eggs we ever dyed. Grandpa Ric got s...

Since the weather has been so crappy and now that that I feel like a beached whale I feel like we have camped out at home ALOT. Yeah.....I know poor Emmi. But I can say Emmi has improved tremendously on her independent play. Sometimes an hour has passed and she is still quietly playing. Her new things......"cooking", and playing "rock-a-bye-baby" with her babies. She learned this one from her dance class. She gets her baby in a blanket and she swings the baby back and forth and sings the whole song. Her little voice couldn't be any cuter and what's even more impressive is that she can carry the melody perfect. She loves to read her books by "self". And she LOVES playing in the bathroom sink water. She supposedly is "washing dishes" We have complete meltdowns when that game has to end. She loves listening to the Mama Mia soundtrack and playing the "color game". My homemade game that has been a favorite of hers. The potty is a ne...

Props to me..... I actually baked something. If you know me well.....that is very RARE. My reasons: 1. Nothing comes out right. My cookies are pancakes, and my cakes sink. 2. I have no electric mixer of any type, so my arm starts to cramp and I end up calling on Brian to stir for me. 3. My patience is about slim to none and... final I can confess that I usually just binge and eat a good 10,000 calories and finish everything off. I always have good intentions of giving them away but between Brian and I we just end up eating all of it.....plus a gallon of milk with it. These pictures may go down in history......these cookies actually came out right. And believe me we ate every last one. YUM YUM.....EXTRA YUM!!!

Wow.....can you believe that it has been 4 years since the day Ragnar Birkeland came to us for a quick visit? It is such an easy day to remember since it is on St. Patricks Day. We have now renamed the holiday in honor of our little boy to St. Raggy's Day. If any of you don't know the story behind the name RAGNAR....well....you may think we are kinda mean parents. But believe me it fits. It always is a good day to remember what we have to look forward to when we see the little dude again. I do feel like it is a little blessing to always have that excitement to raise a child we do not know in the next life. I can't wait to see what little personality he has, and to see my love grow for him. I am sure he is up there now giving our new little boy some pointers on how to deal with us. Hopefully "Jack" is taking the pointers to good heart. So, you are all probably wondering if that is the name of our new baby boy. Well, we have been throwing around multiple names, bu...

The Mom and Tot dance class is the highlight of Emmi's week. In fact every morning I ask her what she wants to do and without fail she says, "Dance Class". She absolutely loves being with all these little girls. She is constantly talking about all of them and especially about Ella. They see each other and for the first 10 minutes of class they HAVE to be holding hands. Every week they get better and better at listening and getting the moves down. It is so cute. The best is that she has to have her tights and tuttu on or she has a breakdown. I hope she will take to dance and be a great little dancer.

For some reason Valentines Day is a holiday that I could take or leave, but every year without fail I seem to always ask myself...."Do you think Brian remembered? Will he actually put some thought into something this year, or will it be the token Costco roses? What do you all think it was this year? Emmi was for sure my favorite Valentine this year. No offense Brian...you took the back burner this year. I made a lunch with as much red in it as possible. I set her pink table up cute and we had a little Valentine picnic. Her favorite was the red cherry Fresca in her tiny goblet. I won't tell you about the multiple spills due to no fine dexterity. All in all it was my Valentines highlight. After a nap we went to our 3:00 sugar cookie decorating appointment with Grandma Birkeland. Emmi didn't seem to care about eating the cookies she just cared about the sprinkles and the frosting. She definitely didn't get that from me. I hate frosting. She had a blast. What a ...