Monday, January 26, 2009

Happy Birthday Joseph and Elizabeth!




Tonight we celebrated Joseph and Elizabeth's birthdays. We had our families over for cake and ice cream...Lizzie is now a full-fledged two year old toddler. (See picture below with artistic lipstick applied by herself to herself...) She has been our easiest baby. She is very patient and easy to please. Even when she is starving or exhausted, she hardly fusses. She was a surprise baby, and it is almost as if she inately understands her luck and doesn't want to rock the boat! She is just glad to be around people she loves. I have a feeling she will probably be an easy toddler. So far, she hasn't done anything really naughty. I love hearing her tiny voice call for me: "Mommy, are you?" ("Mommy, where are you?") I actually enjoy taking her with me to run errands because she is so well behaved and mellow in shopping carts. I really like her company. Because she is our last child, I like to rock her longer before bed and kiss her 'one more time.' I love that she loves violin. You'd think with all the music lessons going on around here, for as many years as it has, that ALL of my kids would naturally be drawn to it. Not so much. But Elizabeth, yes. We have to hide Emma's violin because Lizzie wants to play it. All the time. And she whines to me, "Mommy, song. Mommy, song." This means she wants me to play the piano while she sways back and forth pretending to play her tiny 1/64th size violin. A couple of months ago a student of mine played in our sacrament meeting. After she was done, Elizabeth stood on the bench with outstretched arms screaming "Bio-in! MYYYY Bio-in!!!" We couldn't calm her down so Joseph spent the rest of the meeting pacing out in the halls trying to get her to forget the musical number. She imitates students exactly during lessons, adjusting her bow fingers, pointing to the music with her bow, and finally taking the final bow at the end of each lesson. We'll keep our fingers crossed with this child! She is truly a joy. Our bonus baby...

As for my sweet Joseph, whom I affectionately call "Fofe", I love him more than I can express. He was and continues to be the choice of my heart. I had a terrible day on Saturday and I broke down in tears of sorrow. (Neither of us could remember the last time I cried because I was sad!) But he wrapped his arms around me and held me until I had stopped crying and my breathing became even again. And he listened.

He is a walking miracle. Just ask his adoring, beautiful, gracious mother who threatened to deliver him 3 months early. Just ask her about how a car backed over him as a toddler and when she picked him up, he had tread marks on his little red shirt, but no broken bones or internal damage or scratches of any kind. Just ask his Dad about the time he went missing as a toddler at an outdoor church function and several minutes later, found him lying face down in a pond. Just ask his adoring wife who continues to be amazed that he not only puts up with me (I'm hard to live with!), but he forgives me, he loves me, he supports me and he offers all of his tender heart to me. How grateful I am that he was born. He is my better half. And somehow he completes me. I am high strung, animated and sometimes controlling, but he gently leads me and calms my stormy tendencies. I am so privileged to have his hand. I've watched him serving in these leadership positions the past year in our ward, and I have seen him kneeling in prayer over and over again to summon answers and strength from the Lord. The other night we were having companionship prayer and he was saying it. I wasn't very focused, because I noticed he had been praying for 22 minutes. I was starting to get a little restless. I think I started to mumble something not-so-Christlike under my breath when we said 'amen', but I immediately regreted it because I caught the beauty of the situation. I'm so blessed to have someone pray so specifically for all the important things in our lives. What was I thinking? :) Anyway, he's going to kill me for this post because he is a very private person, but hey, he can get me back by praying longer when it's his turn next...

3 comments:

Mindy said...

Beautiful post, Annalee! It sounds like our husbands put up with similar wives... passion for music comes with a price, I guess. ;) Happy birthday to two of your greatest loves!

The Taggarts said...

I'm glad they had she had a great birthday. Sorry to hear you had a rough day the other day. I hope all is well now. It's fun to learn more about Lizzie and Joseph. It IS amazing he's alive! Thanks for the fun time today.

MadMadameMim said...

Hmmm, I wonder how many wives feel that way about the husbands. In our family Billy is known simply as the Angel, for many reasons, not the least of which is how hard I am to put up with. Lizzy is a sweet thing, and her violin skills are very impressive.