Wow...the last 72 hours have been some of the best Joshua has had so far!  They have removed all his chest tubes, his catheter (hurray for changing diapers again!!), and his pacer wires.  He is WAY down on medications he needs and cuts them down more and more each day.  The hardest part for me to watch is them taking him off the pain medicine. Apparently, it is very easy for them to get used to taking the medicine and they can go through some mild withdrawal symptoms.  Even those seem better today, since they started cutting back a little slower.  All in all, things are looking so good!

Wide awake! He is awake more and more.  All the nurses comment on his bright eyes :)  I just love that I can see those eyes again!  The more they take away his sedation, the more I see my sweet boy come back.

They were able to take the bandage off his chest incision.  Check out that manly scar!  He will have an awesome story to tell his classmates someday!

It is amazing to me how many people are working so hard to get him better.  This picture was taken when they were trying to fix his Arterial line.  They had our nurse, the fellow, the lead tech, and two surgeons in the room!  They tried for about 2 hours to put in a new one, only to have the surgeons come in and fix the one he already had.  Crazy!

Our next big milestone is getting his breathing tube out!  I am hopeful it will happen today, but it could be tomorrow.  They are still a little concerned because he has had some fluid in his lungs that makes them nervous.  His lungs sound better every day, but they don't want to take the breathing tube out only to have to put it back in.  Apparently it can be difficult to out it back in because the neck can be inflamed and swollen, making the airway smaller.  So, while I hope it comes out today, I do not want them to take it out early.  So we will just have to wait and see. 

We have also had some fun decorating his room.  It is fun for Logan to see all the fun decorations and it makes it a little more fun for all of us! 

The window of his door.  We love monkeys!  Thanks to my mom, we have some serious monkey business happenin'!  As soon as she heard we could decorate, my mom took care of finding the perfect things for us :)

More monkeys inside.

Our checklist!  We are slowly making progress and working towards these milestones. Can't wait to cross more off!!