Well it has been two months since I last made a journal entry. Been pretty busy around here and every day I say I am going to make an entry, but the end of the day comes and I succumb to the urge to lay down in bed with Mom and watch a few minutes of TV before going to sleep. I must say though that every day, Joshua does something new now that either thoroughly impresses us or completely catches us off guard with something hysterically funny. Joshua is definitely the entertainer around our house :)

A lot has changed since my last entry (Audrey, Josh's vocabulary, etc.), but let me finish up a few highlights/lowlights of our first vacation down to our timeshare in Orlando.

On Monday, December 12th, we made the 'monumental' mistake of taking Josh to Walt Disney World. In theory, we knew Josh wouldn't last that long and that the lines to rides would be long, but I guess we weren't prepared for how miserable it would be. It started out bad, when we forgot Josh's hat and sunscreen so we went to the Disney store to pick some up. Well, about 2oz of sunscreen cost us about $25...that was a 'well planned' expenditure ;) There were a couple of highlights however. We walked through some of the character 'houses' (we have it on camcorder) and Josh of course were most impressed with Mickey's kitchen. Josh could have stayed there all day and played if we let him. We went on 'It's a Small World' ride and Josh enjoyed that pretty good, but other than those 30 minutes, we probably spent over an hour and a half at 'Pooh Playground' which was no better than Orange Lake's pool/playground. We spent a lot of time walking, getting frustrated and lines, and Mom and I getting stressed with the situation and each other :$ whoops ;). So after about five hours, we were all mentally wiped out and headed back home. $200+ dollars later for the trip. We could have spent $2 in gas driving to Orlando mall and letting Josh play in Playmobile Land (which became almost a nightly ritual) and he would have enjoyed it just as much if not more.

On Tuesday, the only out of the ordinary thing I remember is Josh's reaction to a little accident he had. As usual, at night, we let him run around naked to satisfy his craving for 'Naked Time'. He of course high steps around the condo, repeatedly 'makes phone calls', and of course has to get the dryer and comb out and 'style' his hair in the nude. Well, today he happened to poop all down his leg (luckily he was on the tile floor of bathroom), but the interesting thing was how upset he got about it. I mean if it were me and I had choice of a little poop hitting my leg on way to floor or having it in a diaper in my crotch, I'd choose the former, but Josh was livid. It took us about 25 minutes to calm him down :S In hindsight it is kind of funny but at the time, he was so worked up he almost brought himself to a vomit. Mom and I started to wonder if he were almost ready for potty training after this incident.

On Thursday, again we had a highlight surrounding bath time. Tonight, Josh finally beat his fear of the jets in the Jacuzzi bathtub. He was pretty proud about that fact too and so was I considering how terrified he was of them just a day before. It was neat to see him conquer this fear and then be all proud and want to show me and Mom how he could turn them on and off.

On Friday, our vacation was over. For the most part, we played it very low key. Our daily ritual was basically, get up and go swimming, come home and nap, get up and go to the mall, come home and eat, go to bed. I would occasionally go over to Welcome Center to work when I had to, but all in all it was very relaxing vacation. So much so, that this is probably the first vacation I can remember in a long time where I wasn't 'dying' to get home after seven days. I wasn't totally disappointed that I was coming home, but I could have easily stayed a few more days. Josh you are a very good and easy child to be around and I hope that translates into how you will be in youth and beyond. Anyway, when heading home, it became pretty 'hectic'.

Again, Josh for the most part flew home great. Actually Mom and I were dosing off, and Josh was just sitting there in his car seat playing by himself, or trying to get me to play. Then the smell hit. Luckily Mom was on the aisle seat so she got diaper changing duties and took you back. About 25 minutes later, Josh and Mom came back but Josh was in a new outfit - uh oh. I could only imagine how tight it was in an airplane bathroom (didn't even ask, but hopefully they had a changing table located outside bathroom or something), but to have Josh blast through his outfit and have to deal with that as well...thank God I took the window seat ;) So, smooth sailing now right?! About 30 minutes later, the smell hit again!! OMG So Mom dutifully marched back to change him again. Again another 20 minutes later, Mom and Josh come back but this time Josh is in his diaper only. He had blasted through his only other outfit in the diaper bag and we only had one diaper left. So now we are starting to sweat a bit, but we didn't have much further to fly. However, we were landing in frigid Minnesota with Josh sporting nothing but a diaper...I could only imagine what we were going to look like walking off the plane lol.

Luckily we made it home without any more explosive dumps, braved the elements while exiting the plane, and waited for our luggage so we could put some clothes on Josh. Of course there was a delay in our luggage coming in, and while waiting Val had arrived to pick us up. I decided to just run Josh to the car (hell I'm sure I was dragged around in winter in my diaper only, wasn't I?!?!). It was only about 10 feet, so I quickly got him to the car and buckled him in. I failed to realize that Josh now thought we were leaving him again since Val was in the driver's seat and I went running back in to wait for the luggage. Josh immediately melted down into crying hysteria. Mom was standing by one set of our luggage, so when I got back in airport she went out to car and managed to calm Josh down, but she and Val said it was pretty ugly for a bit.

It was a great, first family vacation and I can't wait to go on more of them with Josh, Mom, and soon Audrey.

Audrey Jean was born at 2:12 PM, Thursday 2/2/2006. The birth was extremely fast actually. We went in for scheduled induction at 7 AM (too bad it wasn't until 8AM but the extra hour of time alone with Mom was fun), they put Ann on pitosin and epideral and both Mom and Dad took naps on and off. Around 1:30 PM, Ann started feeling a 'little uncomfortable' (in her words). By quarter to 2, she said she was ready to push and told me to get the nurses. Next thing I know, Audrey is there. Literally probably 2-3 minutes of pushing if that. I think everyone was surprised at how fast it went - especially Audrey. Whatever 'scores' they do for children, Audrey's first minute was 'bad' - scoring only 5 out of 10.

As I was going over to film the 'cleaning up' part of the baby, I could see she wasn't breathing and starting to turn blue :O, not to mention the shoulder distocia which she got and her left arm looked limp and pretty pathetic, and I could see urgency in doctor's actions which made me nervous enough to not start recording until I figured out what was going on, but Audrey came around and the second minute of her life was much better scoring 8 out of 10. Obviously breathing ;) and moving her arm a 'bit'. It was still weak, but doctors weren't concerned about it - they did xray it last night and didn't find anything to be alarmed about. I hit the 'record' button finally. I was told that basically 10 is impossible and 9 is highest they'd ever give. So I was satisfied with Audrey's score of 8.

Then the doctor found out that there was still some placenta in Ann and she was 'bleeding out' some. Luckily they caught it early and were able to fix the issue, although Ann lost more blood than normal/desired, so for the next several hours, she was 'battling' passing out and light headed-ness (never passed out, just on verge a couple times).

So in between helping Ann, we discovered that Audrey was having a hard time keeping her temperature up and her blood sugar levels were low. Which in turn made her tired and therefore prevented her from eating even though eating was supposedly the cure for this (déjà vu anyone?). So we had to constantly 'piss Audrey off' to wake her up and then try to feed her. Too bad, she gets her sleeping habits from her Grandpa Aney, cause this girl could sleep through an earth quake, it was almost comical. Even when they were doing blood tests and poking her for blood, she'd cry a bit and before the band aid was even put on, she was sleeping again.

Finally at 9PM we were moving up to our room - Ann was still weazy, tired, anxious, and whatever other feelings go with birth that a man can't comprehend, and Audrey was off to level-2 nursery so they could monitor blood sugar because she couldn't maintain it. Josh was just showing up to the hospital now for the first time to see Mom all day and obviously Audrey for the first time. I took him back to level-2 nursery and they were putting in a feeding tube in Audrey's nose and she was understandably crying. So for the rest of the night and all the way up until now (just put Josh down for nap at 2PM) Josh goes into his rhythmic chants several times a day...Au-dee...ky...Au-dee...ky (Audrey, cry). Hate to know how he's going to deal with it when she comes home and really cries ;)

Anyway, other than Josh desperately missing Mommy last night after seeing her (so much so that he worked himself up to vomiting), everyone is doing well. Ann is over her lightheaded-ness and just trying to catch up on sleep. Dad and Josh are at home doing Daddy-Daycare and Audrey is doing a lot of sleeping. She is still being supplemented with sugar water to help with blood sugars, but the doctors/nurses aren't showing any signs of concern so that is what I believe as well (hopefully I'm not too trusting).

I snapped just a couple pictures yesterday, you can see them in the Welcome little angel... photo gallery - I'll put up some video later. Audrey definitely has the same chubby cheeks Josh did and looks fairly like him, except for the major cone-head Josh got due to 4 hours of pushing in that labor versus Audrey's 5 minutes. I guess if you average them out, 2 hours of pushing per birth isn't that bad is it? At least not for me, God bless Ann and God bless God for not making men have kids ;)