Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas to everyone (a few days late). Josiah had a busy past few days including traveling to Grandma and Grandpa Call's house and meeting mom's cousin Lori. Then traveling to Cedar Vale for the big Call Christmas meeting all of mom's aunts and uncles and many cousins. Josiah was a wonderfully traveler and slept through many long car rides.

More pictures to come of all our traveling and meeting family.

A week of many firsts

It was a week of many firsts for our precious little Josiah. On Monday, we ventured out in the cold weather to surprise Uncle Caleb as he arrived back in the states after living in Indonesia for the past two years. Uncle Caleb was pretty excited and proud of his first nephew! We had a great dinner at Famous Dave's. Josiah did great until we were done eating, and then he decided it was his turn!

Our first bath:

We gave Josiah his first bath on Sunday night. It was quite the process and Josiah screamed during most of it. The best part as combing his hair - he has a natural mohawk.

On Wednesday, we are our first outing, just Mom and Josiah. We had a doctor's appointment - Josiah is doing well was almost back up to his birth weight. After the doctor's we went to mom's office to show off. Every one thought he was great! Mom was even able to run by the store. A very successful outing for our first one. We made it home just in time to eat again!

On Friday, we went to our first Christmas Party. Josiah was dressed in a cute little Christmas outfit, but managed to pee all over it right before we left (the first of many last minute wardrobe changes). We had a good time seeing friends and introducing our new little fellow. He was great - just sleeping through it all!

Tomorrow, we are hoping to make it to church for our first time as a family of 3. They weather is suppose to be bitterly cold so we will see how the night goes and what the temps are like in the morning.

More pictures to come tomorrow of proud grandparents and great-grandparents.

We're home!

Just a quick update to let you know we are home and everyone is doing well. We got home around 2:30 this afternoon. Jeff and I just laughed at the state our house was in! Here are a couple of pictures.
All dressed up and ready to go home!


Proud (and tired) mommy - I am not as drugged as I look!


Happy and proud daddy!


Zane meeting sizing up his competition!


More to come later... I am off to feed him and daddy is in bed getting rest.

Welcome to the World... Josiah Scott Pankewich

I know we have either talked to or emailed/facebooked with most of you, so you know some of the details by now. Josiah Scott Pankewich was brought into the World at 9:55 PM on Tuesday, December 9, 2008. He weighs 7lbs 8oz, and is 19 inches long. He is just perfect. We keep thinking to ourselves..."Is it just because he is our kiddo that he seems so perfect, or does he really look that good, and behave so well???" It is truly amazing. Here's the story the best I can tell it.

Heidi went to the doctor on Tuesday morning for a check-up. Heidi has been pretty swollen for the past couple of weeks, and only getting bigger... Dr. Brunner was a bit worried about preeclampsia, so she told Heidi to go home and rest for the remainder of the day. Her blood pressure was a bit high and some of the other tests came back as warning signs that we needed to keep a close eye on her. Josiah was fine, but we were on alert for sure. Like is typical for her, Heidi went back to work for a short time to talk to her boss and co-worker so that she could let them be ready to take the things that Heidi was working on and run with them... Due to the snow, I went home a bit early from work. I had to run a couple of errands when I got there, so I went back into town. Heidi called me and told me that the nurse wanted her to get a blood pressure monitor so that we could keep an eye on her. Heidi was also so excited that she got to begin a 24 hour urine test starting Wednesday morning.

I got home from my running around and Heidi was on the phone with her boss, going over a few more work things. She hung up the phone at about 5:45 and she was going to get something to eat. We didn't get so far though... Right about 6:00 her water broke. We laid her down in the bed and I called in. They told us to come right in to the hospital, and her contractions started in about 10 minutes. They were about 5 minutes apart from the very beginning. I frantically packed my bag of clothes and gathered the last-minute things that I needed while trying to stay calm and time her contractions... it was a bit crazy. We got into the car and headed right to the hospital. Luckily the highway is right by the house and it wasn't too slick. They did a good job of clearing the highways of the snow and ice, so I was able to driveat about 50-55 mph.

We got to the hospital shortly after 7:00 and they brought us right to the room. Heidi progressed pretty quickly and it was pretty obvious that this was going to be a quick labor. Without going into too many details, she went from 2 cm and 75% effaced to 5 cm and 90% effaced in about 40 minutes. By then, she was having difficulty controlling her breathing. The nurses were great at getting her under control when I couldn't. She was also ready to get the epidural by now. They ordered the epidural, and by the time that she got it, she was probably 7cm, so pretty much past the danger zone of receiving it too early. Our Doctor was called and she made the trek to the hospital after she had just finished her bath and hopped into bed. (poor Dr. Brunner had travelled home which 2.5 hours due to the weather and traffic. Fortunately it only took about 30 minutes for her to get back.) When she got here, Heidi was very alert and relaxed and ready to deliver. She was at 9-10 cm, so the doctor got all robed up and they made the final preparations for Heidi. The doc came over and got Heidi to start pushing... From then it went so fast, and Heidi did very well... She only had to push through four contractions, for about 8 minutes, and beautiful Josiah popped out very healthy and crying like he should at 9:55... What an amazing moment when Dr. Brunner got him out and turned him so that Heidi could see him. I got to cut the cord and they took him to the warmer and cleaned him up. Heidi had a little bit of tearing so the doc had to stitch her up, and by the time she was ready, they brought him over and put him right on her chest. within 10 minutes, she was able to start feeding him a little bit. We got about an hour to ourselves with him, with only a few visits to check both Heidi and Josiah. What a blessing to be able to have this precious time with just the three of us.

We are so grateful for all that has gone on, and how well everything went. We are also grateful for all of your prayers for us. We feel so loved and so fortunate that God has blessed us with such a wonderful, precious baby boy.

I attached a few pics that Heidi's friend Emily got on her camera this morning when she visited. Unfortunately we forgot to bring the cable to download from our camera to the computer, there will be plenty of more pics that we will be able to post when we get home... which if all goes well will be sometime Thursday around lunch. Thank you for your love and prayers for us.

Showered by family and friends

Last weekend we were showered by family and friends. My sister-in-law, Steph, hosted the shower at their house. We had a Radio Flyer (red and black) theme! It was awesome. Also, my niece and nephew helped Nana make some yummy dirt "wormy" cake!

Our niece Emerald is really excited to meet our little guy! I think this is a precious picture - even though it was somewhat posed.


Grandma Call, Me, and Nana Pankewich! For Grandma, our little guy will be the first grandchild with a second one to come in about six months. For Nana, he will be the fourth grandchild with the third one added just 3 months ago, and a fifth being added in a couple months! We are excited to see our little guy grow up with cousins on both sides of the family so close to him in age.

The post would not be complete with out a picture of the "Callgirls!" We missed Tamra the fifth Callgirl and can't wait for her to move back! Soon all the callgirls will be back in Kansas.

We had such a great day celebrating with family and friends. Unfortunately, I don't have a picture of Steph and I, or of my good friends from college that came. They are all on someone else's camera. We felt very blessed by the generousity of so many people that care about us.


Update on the pregnancy: We will be at 37 weeks on Tuesday - hard to believe. We are packing the hospital bag so it is ready. I did all of his laundry this weekend and trying to put it all away. We have our cloth diapers ordered and they should be here in a few days. So I think we are ready. Overall, I am starting to wear down - getting more tired and sore each day. I am pretty proud of myself, I have actually taken it easy the past few days. Taking naps and not getting everything done that is on my list - which is an accomplishment in itself for me. We were able to travel to my parents for Thanksgiving - a brief but good trip.

Jeff is currently "nesting" by redoing our bathtub/shower surround. It needed to be done soon - it was pretty bad. As with any other home improvement project it never goes quite as planned. We currently have some very beautiful cement backer board up. Hopefully in a few days some nice new tile. In the meantime we are taking sponge baths and traveling to Skip and Stephs for showers.

That is all for now. We will try to post a little more regularly... and soon we will have tons of pictures of our new little one to post. We hope you all had a wonderful Thanksgiving!

"My Last Post" by Zane

Hi, my name is Zane. You may have heard about me, but you probably won't hear about me or see pictures of me for a while... They keep moving stuff around in my house, moving my kennel and my orange chair around to different places. I know something is going on but I'm not sure what.

Take a good look at these pictures as they may be my last ones on this blog... ever!
Daddy thinks its funny to dress me up in his sweatshirts... I don't feel the same way!


I like to rest my head on Mommy's lap, but her lap seems to be getting smaller and smaller these days. Not sure why, but probably has something to do with all the stuff they keep moving around. They keep pointing to Mommy's belly and asking me where Josiah is? I keep looking, but I still can't see him.

- Zane

72 days until Christmas...

Just a quick update to let you all know we have reached the 30 week mark and can't believe our little guy could be here in approximately 10 weeks. I would upload some pictures, but my computer is currently disabled as we have finally cleared out the old office/new nursery and have not got everything set up in the new office/storage room yet. More to come soon!