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My husband and I agree that each holiday has been sweeter the day we became parents. We get a chance to start new traditions and enjoy the way our daughters react to holidays. Although they are still too young to latch onto traditions, over the last couple of weeks we read stories to Emma of why we celebrate Easter. Last year we bought her The Story of Easter this year we added Bernstein Bears’ Easter Sunday.

This year we also took Emma to participate in some Easter egg hunts and Easter activities. The fun part was watching her participation. She’d collect a few eggs and we’d also help her. Then she’d collect a few more and put them in other kids baskets haha! Once she thought she had enough (about 5-8 eggs) she’d walk away with her basket and play with them. Her favorite eggs were the ones filled with stickers. Josh and I didn’t mind eating the candy.

Liv, Liv, Liv. My baby slept through all the activities except Easter Sunday service. My goodness, my girls were on a different level that day. Out of all days Emma woke up at 8 a.m. when she usually wakes up at 9 a.m. or later. I know, it’s not that early, but the night before she struggled and fell asleep a little past 11 p.m. so I figured she’d sleep in, but no! Right from the start she was grumpy.

I knew it was going to be “one of those days” but was being hopeful that her behavior would change once we got to church. To be completely honest some of it is a blur. I don’t even know what happened as I was trying to keep it together. The good thing is that my sister-in-love was home visiting from college and was a huge help that day. She helped me with the baby while I took care of Emma.

Let’s rewind a little bit. The Sunday before, the little girls at church had a special presentation  where they signed and played tambourines. Emma loved it. She had her own tambourine that day and was doing everything the girls were doing from our pew. So for Easter Sunday they were going to have a different presentation which Emma practiced for that week. Come Sunday, she didn’t want anything to do with it. All she wanted to do was be carried and eat snacks.

Eventually I put her in Liv’s car seat and rocked her to sleep. Then I was on to the next baby. I thought ok, feeding Liv and putting her to nap will be a piece of cake and I can finally listen to the message, right? Wrong! Liv did not want to sleep after eating, but she didn’t want to be up either. She was a hot mess. It didn’t matter what I did or how I rocked her she wouldn’t sleep. She finally calmed down and Emma woke up, but thanks to my sister-in-love I was able to hand her the baby again.

Usually naps do the trick for Emma, but not on Sunday. At first she seemed fine. We even walked outside to hand out some goody bags her and I had prepared for the kids. She was even handing them out herself. Shortly after she wanted to be held by her dad and the rest of the time we were at church she wasn’t in a good mood. By the time I got back to Liv she had fallen asleep so we packed up and headed home.

Before getting home we made a stop to take our Easter pictures because we obviously weren’t able to take some at church. Even trying to get a good family picture was a little tough. After the pictures and after running around for a little bit Emma started feeling better. In the afternoon we had our whole family to help us with the girls. Like usual Liv went back to eating and sleeping. Emma had a longer nap and the rest of the day was much smoother.

I don’t know what song the choir sang that morning or what the message was about. All I know is that God’s unfailing, unconditional and everlasting love gives us life!

Take a look at some of the activities we did this year….