Happy Birthday to my Two Babies!

Before 2007 comes, I want to acknowledge the birthdays of my two babies in 2006 that just went by during this holiday season.

Today is my first baby’s birthday, Alex, who just turned 12! This is a significant age in our church as he moves up into the youth program now. We celebrated yesterday by bringing him to a restaurant of his choice, and he wanted the waitresses to sing to him. They did and he was asked to stand up on his chair, so he felt that was “special”, although he said he was “a little bit embarrassed.” We were able to select a seat grouping where he sat right under a ceiling fan, which is one of his favorite things. We let him choose who of the siblings he wanted to go out to dinner with him. He chose Eric and Abbey and Eli declined. So, it was just four of us, but he enjoyed himself. The restaurant had “Kraft” macaroni and cheese, so he thought that was special, too. On the way home, he stopped and had me get him two orders of cheese breadsticks from Pizza Hut; one for him and one to share with his brother, Adam. He always remembers his brother 🙂

Alex is hard to buy presents for, so we’ve let him know that we’re planning something after we take his oldest brother out West to start his mission trip. Alex and Eli will then take over the basement area for their rooms/space (which they had also shared with Eric, who tended to be the one who “ruled” the area due to age), and now it will become theirs, so I have some surprises up my sleeve; a type of “extreme make-over bedroom”, as Alex loves that show 🙂 I’ll definitely have to come up with something unique to display his ceiling fan collection!

Happy Birthday, Alex!

Then, on Christmas Day, my other baby, Joseph, turned 6! These two really are like two babies of the family because of where they fall in their birth order within their birth families. I have two firstborns, too 🙂 We celebrated Joseph’s birthday on the Saturday before. He chose the restaurant that we all went to except Eric and Adam: Cracker Barrel. We wanted to have the limelight on Joseph, and Adam is so complex to accommodate right now, as well as his agitation toward his brother, Eric’s voice. So, Eric graciously offered to stay home with him, though Joseph tends to annoy him anyway.They were a part of the first expansion and they were first owned by Frederic McLaughlin who had made his fortune in the devensec.com (buy generic levitra) sales of coffee.

Joseph was pleased to order from a regular menu versus fast food. However, he wasn’t too thrilled with the time it takes sit-down restaurant food to arrive. We let the waitress know that it was his birthday, and they sang for him, and he felt special. After they finished, he ceremoniously said, “Thank you, thank you”, and waved to them. He ate about three bites from the dessert they treated him to, but that way, I got some chocolate out of it 🙂

Joseph tends to get overwhelmed by the limelight at times, so I tried hard to underplay the present opening time earlier in the day. Because I allow the birth parents to give him presents (that I pick up separately prior to the birthdays), he had four presents to open: one from each of them, one from us, and one from one set of grandparents (the other giving money). For birthdays in our family, usually it’s one or two presents for birthdays. Joseph handled the excess well, though, with my careful preparations. It was a good variety (as the birth parents usually ask me what he would like): a remote control Hummer (already left in the rain and waiting to see if it still works), a battery-operated baseball pitching machine (wonderful!), a small acoustic guitar (his favorite, and he holds it so naturally), and a vacuum that really sucks up things.

Happy birthday, Joseph!