The Birkeland Family Blog

Hey guys.....It's me Jack Jones. I am 20 months old now and I keep my mom going all day long. My favorite things: 1. dressing up (I just want to be just like my sister. Can you blame me?) 2. my bottle (I totally con my mom into giving me one everyday sometimes more...he he :)) 3. reading books (The Mitten, No David, Animal picture books) 4. brooms and mops (My mom thinks I will grow up to be a janitor one day. Thanks mom for having such high hopes for me) 5. Spatulas and tongs (My favorite thing is to unfold all the clean laundry piece by piece with salad tongs. Good times folks. The look on my mom's face is priceless) 6. Playing in the toilet. (You would think that with all the scolding my mom does the novelty would wear off....oh no I love getting the toilet paper all soggy and sweeping across the bathroom walls and floors. There's nothing better than being a kid.) 7. Seeing myself pee. (I have to admit I do like this. My mom takes me to the potty and I say, "I peed...

After 1 year of roughly 10-12 sick visits to the drs. and 6 months of NO SLEEP it finally came down to having a tonsilectomy and adenoidectomy. When I say 6 months of no sleep I mean 6 whole months. Emmi would go to bed no problem but after being asleep for about 2 to 3 hours the wakings would begin. We would be waked by panic screaming. When we went to her room to comfort her she would say she was scared. She wouldn't talk about dreams or anything. We would lay by her and she would quickly fall back to sleep. That was happening over and over all night long. We have been zombies for so long. We read every sleep book in the planet. Then she would be sick again. We would try to "sleep train" her over and over with different techniques. One was to give her one chance to come out of her room, then after that was to lock her in her room. That seemed awful and cruel but we thought it will just take a couple of bad nights. Well, the panic screaming got worse and worse. Not bette...

I am back in the blogging world. I am going to take extra effort to take more pictures and to take more time for my mommy journal this year. CHEERS 2011

I'm not sure when it all happened, but one day I awakend and realized I was in love. Yep, in love with the little Jack in the Box. Jack, with his variety of expressions, his quickness to capture anything that is going on, and his insistence to climb and explore, has inspired me to capture as much of him on film as I can. Grammy's little love in the sink for a quick clean up The most awesome pictures of Jack is usually when he is wearing diaper. [ Doodles by Grammy Jill

Through thick and thin, sun or storm, ups and downs, Emmi is Grammy’s girl. From out of the hatch, I bonded with my little Rooni Toons like birds of a feather. One day, Emmi and I were checking out groceries and a girl in line looked at her and said, "Hmmm, she has chocolate eyes and caramel hair. If you ask Emmi what color are her eyes, she will say, "Brown". But if you ask me....I will not hesitate to proclaim her beautiful chocolate eyes. And, I never will stop at that. I will continue to comment (never to proud to gloat) over her curly silken caramel hair. Doodles by Grammy Jill

HaPpY BiRtHdAy EmMi 3 years old Emmi's rainbow birthday invitation Emmi turned 3. Deciding the theme of her party seemed to change at any given moment. At first she wanted a pink party, then it went to a purple party, then to an orange party. When I mentioned a rainbow party she thought it was the best idea ever. Isn't it fun when your kid actually thinks you're the hero? She couldn't stop telling everyone that she was going to have a rainbow party. She invited 4 neighbor friends. They all wore their favorite color and we had a little "rainbow" lunch, and all the food had something to do with colors or rainbows. I ordered rainbow bread from a local bakery and made peanut butter and jam sandwiches, and egg salad sandwiches on the request of Emmi. A fruit platter in the shape of a rainbow and just some rainbow snacks. After lunch they took some time to make some bead necklaces with all the colors of the rainbow. For a bunch of 3 year olds I think it went pretty...