our little man

He looks so concerned...

I often wonder, "What's going on in that little head of yours?"

"what happened to us?" - volume two.

We thought this one definitely fit with the series of "what happene to us?" except, I take all the blame for this one.

Here's the explanation to the post: I was mailing Valentine's cards to Josiah's grandparents and great-grandparents and...

...and, well..I'm not really as absent-minded as this picture makes me out to be. Really, Josiah has NOT sucked all my brains out. Really. My granny has been in the hospital and I planned to mail her Valentine there. But, the envelope was in the stack with the other Valentines and well....well, it got mailed before I remembered that I had yet to get the address. And for some reason, the mailman just wasn't sure how to get this to my Granny. Mailmen these days...really falling down on the job! ;-)

rollin' rollin' rollin'

Josiah can now roll from his tummy to his back!!!! He did it four times yesterday by himself (though you'll see me help him in the last time on the video, but give the kid a break, that was his fourth time in a row! - I didn't have the video camera the very first time.)

Roll over, Josiah! Roll over!

where has the time gone?

Wow...Josiah is 3 months old today. Amazing. And look at him, not a care in the world! ;-)

Amazing because just 3 months ago there I was, in the hospital bed, having done probably THE hardest thing I had ever done before (well, until the epidural came ;-)), and the result? - little Josiah Daniel came into this world. And, I was so incredibly clueless. How God has taught us so much in the 3 months since Josiah's arrival. We're learning to lean more and more on Him as we learn to care for this tiny being He has put on loan to us. We're learning how to read Josiah's cues, learning how to meet his needs. And in the process of it all, God is showing me a beautiful picture of how He loves me, how He cares for me, how He meets my needs.

Beautiful.

Dear Meredith...

Dear Meredith,


I'm so excited to get to see you on Friday! I made this video for you... I miss you!!!


and...


I LOVE YOU!!!

Dear "Uncle" Brendon...

Dear "Uncle" Brendon,

I sure do miss you! Mommy and Daddy have been reading your emails that you are sending from Uganda. Have you seen any wild animals in Africa? Did you see a giraffe? What about a monkey? - you know, my Mommy LOVES monkeys. She decorated my room with them and buys me any shirt or pajamas with monkeys on them!

I think God brought you to Uganda for very special purposes. (That's what Mommy and Daddy say.) But, don't get attached to Uganda because I want you to come back here and play with me!

I weigh 10 pounds now...can you believe it? And I'm 4 inches longer than I was when I was born. Today I am 11 weeks old. That's 77 days! Maybe Mommy and Daddy will have a party for me when I'm 100 days old - Daddy likes to do fun things like celebrate 100 days, or 1,000,000 seconds of life. He's so much fun!

I've been working on my tummy time. I'm still not a big fan of it - that head of mine is so stinkin' heavy! But, Mommy and Daddy say I need to practice so I can lift my head up one day and do something they call "crawl"...whatever that is! I guess I'll find out. Mommy made this video for you last week. She caught me smilin' at you.

I love you, "Uncle" Brendon! Take care of yourself and hurry back to see me - but not before God finishes in you His purposes for you there in Uganda! God bless you!!

- Josiah

last long trip, Josiah, we promise!

So, we returned from Louisiana Friday night and got on a plane, headed for New Hampshire Saturday morning...Josiah's last big trip for at least a month. He was a FANTASTIC traveler. He didn't seem to have any problems with the plane rides and he only got fussy once when we were on our 2nd plane of the day on our way there. On our return flight, he was an angel the whole time!

Now, there is something exciting that happened on the way there...umm, exciting? Maybe not exciting. Let's just say eventful! We were sitting on the tarmac, 10th in line for take off and all of a sudden Josiah starts to poop. He hadn't pooped in a couple of days at the time, so not only did he poop that one time, it was followed up by two more poops. Well, I won't go into too much detail, but basically we had to change his diaper in our laps since we were in line for take off (yes, we asked the flight attendant to go to the bathroom, but he insisted that we stay in our seats.) Well, I knew it was going to be bad...and it was! Poop on his feet that kicked my sweater, poop on the blanket underneath him, and...poop on our hands. His diaper was exploding and thankfully we had a ziploc to put it in, but we got pretty messy in the process of cleaning it all up!

We arrived in Boston and drove about an hour to the Livies' home in New Hampshire. It had snowed almost 2 feet in the previous week, so it was pretty exciting to see all of the snow around! This was almost all of the Audis first time to meet Josiah, so there was a mad rush to the door when we got there. Josiah lasted for about an hour, and then he completely lost it - not so much because there were 20+ people wanting to meet him. It was mostly the fact that we had woken up at 4 a.m., been on two flights with a 3 hour layover in Chicago and had driven another hour from the airport to get to our final destination. He had had it! And, he let me know that night! It took a solid 2 hours to really calm him down that night, but whew... after that long night, the rest of the time there was really pleasant. His 8 cousins loved cooing at him.

Isabella (4) kept saying, "He's cute. I just can't stop saying that, 'He's cute!'" She's a cutie! Julia came in the room the night Josiah went balistic and sang to him, "Quiet down, quiet down, quiet down little baby!" Again, so cute! She called him "Hosiah." Did I mention that the cousins also love Daniel??? This is Gabrielle and Julia.

We opened Christmas gifts with the family. Daniel and I got matching UNIVERSITY OF MARYLAND t-shirts. Aren't we cute?!?!....and cheesy!!

Josiah got a University of Maryland onesie and a REDSKINS onesie. All of the Audis are big Redskins fans, having grown up right outside of DC. This is Josiah's cousin Michael sporting his Redskins shirt with Josiah.

There were plenty of activities planned for the week. Josiah and I mostly stayed at home - too cold for him to get out. Plus, it was nice to have some down time for him. Nathan and Michael thought it would be funny to throw and snowball at me...it actually turned out to be a great picture!

And for the final blog picture... I guess sometimes you never grow up, huh, Daniel and Steve??

back to Christmas posts - Road Trip #3: Christmas in Ruston

Our Christmas gift came early this year...it came November 8...isn't Josiah a great gift?!!! We think so!!

And his Papa thinks so too - Papa got TWO presents...2 grandsons for Christmas!

Our family grew this year...we went from 7 to 9!!

me, Daniel, Jenny, Meredith, Brian, Mama (Gran Gran), Brannon, Daddy (Papa), and Josiah

on the road...AGAIN! We had a different Christmas this year in Ruston. Christmas morning as we knew it didn't come on the 25th...it came on the 26th, and I spent the morning of the 25th in the hospital, visiting my Granny. She will be 90 years old February 20, and she fell and shattered her lower femur the week before Christmas. As of today she is still in the hospital but the doctors are amazed at her progress. For a woman whose diet consisted of coke, toast with a heap of butter, and Tootsie Roll Pops, her body is actually incredibly healthy and is proving to be quite resilient despite being 90 years old, overweight, and unable to put any weight on that leg for 10 weeks! Really, the Lord has been so gracious to my Granny.

Back to Christmas.

Jenny, Brian, Meredith, and Brannon arrived on Christmas evening and we all went to Mamaw and Papaw's...we were 30-ish people at their house!

Throughout our childhood, our Papaw would always dress up in his Santa suit and greet children at the bank where he was a board member. We still ask him to get out his old suit for old times' sake!

Papaw and his girls.

Mamaw, "Santa," and their great grandchildren: Sydney, Meredith, Abby, Brannon, Trigger, and Josiah ("little Santa")

Like I said, our "Christmas morning" actually came on the 26th. Brian and Daniel think Jenny and I are ridiculous, but on Christmas morning we always had this rule that you can't look in the den at what Santa brought before the other one. So, we'd have to go together. Every Christmas morning, I'd ALWAYS wake upbefore Jenny, go in her bedroom, wake her up, and we' go brsh our hair (for the pictures, of course), and brush our teeth, and walk into the den together. And...we still do pretty much the same thing! Even at ages 32 and 29 there's still something magical about being a child at heart on Christmas morning, something magical about keeping traditions. And now something magical about spending Christmas with each other and with our children.

beautiful Meredith

matching cousins

Merdedith got a John Deere tractor....such a great country girl!!

interruption of the Christmas posts...part 2

Just when you think you know your son...

Well, I initially only posted the video in the post after this one, but I decided I HAD to include this video as well...usually he likes the "roar" but when I got the camera out to try to catch him on the video smiling at the roar....

interruption of the Christmas posts...

I was gonna finish out the travel posts with Christmas posts, but I'll have to get back to that. Josiah has become quite animated lately, and I wanted to show off his sweet coos and smiles!

***disclaimer on the "roaring" noise I'm making. We watched Prince Caspian the other night and made lion noises at Josiah and he's loved it ever since. Pretty funny!