2 Weeks

Today, Joshua and I took Andi to her two week well-baby appointment. Joshua has not been to this doctor's office since October and he was so cute being the big brother today. He kept saying, "Oh, I remember these toys," and "It's Ok, Andi. No pokes today." These phrases were followed by a very grown up laughter. It reminded me of the first time you visit your elementary school after leaving. The bathrooms seems so small and you feel so big. Joshua certainly showed that he was quite the professional today.

The doctor had nothing but great news about Andi. She now weighs 7lbs 15oz and is 21 inches long, both good signs of healthy growth. She is doing all of the 2 week old things. She coos and smiles at nothing. She is sleeping when we want her to eat and fussing when we want her to sleep. All the normal stuff. It feels really great to be normal!

On another note, please pray for Joshua's friend from the hospital, Charlie. He is now having complications with his recent transplant. Please pray that the very strong medicine he is now receiving will be effective. Charlie is really uncomfortable and actually cannot eat right now; these are hard days for him and his family.

Andi Hope Kelley

Here she is, friends!

Andi Hope was born at 8:30 pm last night. She was 7lbs, 10 oz. and 19 inches long. Jana's labor was relatively easy; she only had to push for about 25 minutes even though we were there all day. She looks great, feels great, acts great - and Joshua loves having a little sister. This morning he ran into the room saying, "Where's Andi? Where's Andi?" He held her and hugged her for about 10 minutes, then he wanted to go feed the ducks at the park.

What an interesting way to celebrate everything that has happened in the last 9 months. Our new daughter, a consistent reminder of God's redemptive work in the world, and her big brother, the cancer-fighter, a reminder of God's faithfulness to His children.

We thought this would be an appropriate time to transfer this blog from being "Joshua's Journey" to "The Kelley's Journey". We are going to start using this as a family blog rather than exclusively posting about Joshua's treatment. This is a good time to do this because we will not be posting about Joshua's leukemia as often because he has moved into the maintenance phase. So we have been sending out an alert email because so many of you have wanted to know how to pray for Joshua. We will still do that when the update concerns Joshua's treatment or prognosis, but we will also be publishing other stuff about our family in the meantime that we will not send out an email reminder for. If you want to, you can book mark our page and check back regularly, or you can just know that we will let you know when there is more news about Joshua.

It would be impossible to thank you for walking alongside of us for these months of treatment. Thank you anyway. Maybe you can look at Andi, as we do, as another tangible example of who God is and who we are in Him, the fact that He is working positively, creatively, and wonderfully throughout all circumstances.