My "middle" child

For now anyway. Poor Zack is already the middle child with this little missy taking so much of my mental "time" right now. Wednesday was Zack's birthday!!! We had a fun day filled with 2 play dates at the park and his 12 month well check. Yes, I'm a mean mom who happened to get the appointment for his shots ON his birthday. Poor kid! But he forgave me quickly and was eating sand at the park an hour later. Aiden was so funny!... When the nurse gave Zack his shots (one in each arm) Aiden said "You don't poke my brother!" as he waved his finger at her. Zack was screaming, Aiden was scolding, and I was cracking up.
So in honor of my little Zack-o, here are a few of the fabulous things he is doing.
*Finally sleeping thru the night! Although I could do without the 6:30 wake up call, 4:30 was worse.
*Has started getting into ALL the cabinets. First it was just the tupperware cabinet. But he has found the hallway linen closet and the bathroom cabinets too now.
*Has almost no interest in walking. Aiden didn't walk until 13 months but I doubt Zack will take off until 14 or 15 months. I'm not in a big hurry for it, but it will be fun when he and Aiden can do even more together.
*Uses a few words. I think he has his own word for "Aiden" that he uses fairly often, but he never repeats it so that I can get a good handle on what he is saying. He says Mama and Dada and Vrmmmmmmmm Baaaaaaa (Vroom Vroom in the Baja).
*He loves to be held by his mom but is starting to get over it cause the bigger the belly gets the less willing mom is to pick him up. (nice run on sentence huh?)
*He loves to play with his brother. This is my most favorite thing of all. They will literally roll around on the floor together in the evenings. Sometimes with daddy too. And when they both end up on their backs they just laugh and laugh. They are such a joy to watch.
We love this little guy so much! I got around to making a birthday cake the day AFTER his birthday, but he enjoyed it just the same. As you can tell!

This girl is already very time consuming!

Let me explain... some of you already know a lot of this, but I have to write it all out for those who don't know and for my personal reference later.
The day we found out that our little one was coming in all her bows and ribbons glory, we also found out that she has a congenital defect. Yes. It sounds awful. But that is how the Dr. explained it to us. Along with words/phrases like "open fetal surgery", "poor lung development" and "mortality rate". YIKES! Needless to say I was FREAKING OUT!!!
What she has is called a Congenital Cystic Adenomatoid Malformation (CCAM) and it is very rare (1 in 30,000). My OB is young and has only seen it 2 or 3 times, and that was probably in medical text books! I REALLY like this doctor but he is very inexperienced with this problem. So we decided to keep it under our hat for a few more days until we could see a perinatologist and get some more direct answers. We didn't want a whole bunch of people freaking out. I had that part covered.
So first we saw a perinatologist who did another ultrasound, confirmed the diagnosis and dismissed all my questions with the same "its too early to tell" answer to everything. Here's where "she's very time consuming" comes in - this was an hour and a half appointment! I was trusting at first but the more I thought about it and talked to people, the more I realized that he really didn't give me what I needed. I need to be informed. For better or worse, I gotta know the possibilities and how they'll be handled. So I asked my OB to give me a referral to another perinatologist for a 2nd opinion.
This time I got what I wanted. She was VERY (3 hour appointment - NO JOKE) thorough and gave me much more information. She was willing to go thru the "what if's" with us and then assured us that more than likely those "what if's" would remain irrelevant in our case.
Okay, so what the crap is a CCAM!?!?!? Basically, it is a fluid filled cyst on the lung. Her's is right next to her heart. The biggest complication we could potentially see (though very unexpected at this point) is if it grows and pushes the heart to the side. This can cause fluid retention in many areas of the baby's body because of the pinching of blood vessels (called Hydrops). Once this happens prognosis is not good. So we won't go any more into that. But there are warning signs that the docs will watch for to know if hydrops is a possibility. Then steroids can be given to help develop the lungs more quickly, reduce the chance of hydrops and ultimately be ready to deliver at any time.
What is more likely in our case is that we will see very little, if any, growth of the cyst over the next 6-8 weeks and then it may even regress in size. She may or may not need assistance at birth so I'll deliver at a Level III hospital. But we are figuring that delivering there will be more of a precaution than anything.
We are definately NOT freaking out anymore. I had a blessing after we first found out about all of this and I have had so much comfort that everything is going to work out. We are so blessed to have this problem and not a severe, life altering, never-be-a-normal-kid kind of problem. So long as she makes it thru the pregnancy and the first little bit of life, she is expected to live a normal, healthy life. For that we are SO grateful. We can't wait to have her rolling around on the floor with her brothers. We can't wait for the struggle its going to be to keep Mr. Zack from mauling her. Aiden gets the "be careful" stuff, but Zack will be a whole 16 months old. We'll see how that goes. And we can't wait. Here are a couple of pics from our ultrasounds. We have a TON, but even this mom isn't sure how many more profile pics we really need! We got a pic today that is 3-D or 4-D and you can see she has her legs crossed - very cute! (but I forgot to get the CD, and I'm not scanning it in, so you'll have to wait...)
YEA FOR LITTLE GIRLS!!!!!
And for anyone wanting to know what this thing looks like, this is a picture of the heart (on the right of the pic) and the cyst (looks like a big black thing on the left)

Sugar & Spice

And everything nice... that's what little GIRLS are made of!!! We are so excited to announce that we'll finally add a little GIRL to our family. We have plenty of "snips & snails & puppy dog tails" for now. We love our boys so much and we are excited for them to have a little sister to pick on and to protect! She's one lucky girl.

Here you go Gina...

The only motivation I have for sitting down and finally posting is that Gina is giving me a hard time. I have SOOO much that I should have blogged about and haven't, that forcing myself to do it lately seems to be such a monumental task.
A few of the things that have happened in the last few months... since November... YIKES! Not all completely chronological...
**We had a great Thanksgiving with our next door neighbors who are heaven sent! Aside from our families in Vegas they really are the people we WANTED to spend the day with.
**We spent 10 days in Vegas over Christmas and got spoiled by our parents as usual.
**My brother (Josh) got married on Dec. 13. Don't feel too bad if you didn't hear about it cause LOTS of people didn't. He and Jen got married in the St. George Temple (cause Vegas was closed for cleaning) and then ran off to San Francisco for their honeymoon. We got back to Vegas for Christmas before they did! :)
**We announced on Christmas morning that we are expecting baby #3 in August. Zack will be 16 months old when this one is born and No, we don't know what we've gotten ourselves into. I am now 13 weeks, and although I don't get very sick (just a little blah feeling) it is still nice to have the first trimester behind me.
**Jeremy and I both got callings. Jeremy is one of 2 Gospel Doctrine teachers and he does great. I think he is really starting to enjoy it. And might even have learned a few peoples' names by now. Maybe.
**I was called as the Enrichment Leader where I served for 6 weeks (which entailed one enrichment activity that was planned before I was called, and one meeting where we started to plan one enrichment activity that took place after I was released!) after which I got called to Young Womens! I don't know if we are 'not supposed' to have a favorite organization, but I do and it is YW. I love being with the girls. This is one of the more difficult YW callings I've had (2nd counselor) but I am still loving it.

I have lots of pictures. Several that I REALLY intended on posting and bragging about how cute my boys are. But there are so many that I am way to far behind to try to catch up. I'm putting a slide show on my side bar if you really want to see the cute things they've been up to.
Now that I've sorta updated this darn blog, maybe I won't be so intimidated to do it again. But... Until next time... :)

Aiden is 3!

My little monkey turns 3 today. We had a party for him last week at our house with a few friends and he has been talking about "December twelve" for a month. Its been so fun to have him getting excited. He amazes me daily. The things he comes up with and the things he repeats (whether from TV or something we've said) crack me up. He has a lot of wit. And a LOT of will and is always up for a fight. He's a pistol and just as soon as I find a method of discipline that seems to be affective, he finds a method of defiance to throw a wrench in it.
But he is a good, loving kid. He loves his little brother - sometimes too much - and tries to be another little mom to him. He looks up to his daddy and wants nothing more than to please him. And he is a sweet little kid to me. Always giving me hugs and kisses - when he isn't being defiant, of course.
He makes us laugh constantly. He wanted to hold Zack today and when I put Zack on his lap, he lifted up his shirt and said "Its time to eat, Zack!" Hilarious!
I'm so glad he's ours and that we are blessed to watch his personality grow and to watch him learn. Especially about the gospel. He loves to sing primary songs and he tugs at my heart strings when he sings "I am a Child of God". He'll be a very young sunbeam in January. We told him he won't be in nursery anymore and he was going to be a Sunbeam. His face lit up and he started singing "Jesus wants me for a sunBEAM".
HAPPY BIRHTDAY AIDEN! WE LOVE YOU!

Good Friends

First, sorry I haven't posted in so long. Too much to do, too little time to do it. But I love this time of year and all the wonderful craziness it brings.
I am feeling so grateful for good friends right now. I spent 2 hours on the phone with Gina today and probably would have spent another hour if kids waking up from naps and husbands getting home from work hadn't interrupted us. (So glad they do though!) I hope Gina doesn't mind me giving a brief background here... She's recently been working with her doctor and exploring some possibilities for fertility treatment. There is a lot going on in her life right now and after having 3 boys in less than 4 years (I know - wow!) she and Jason are having some difficulty getting pregnant again. I'm not minimizing the situation, only limiting the unnecessary details here. We spent a good portion of our time on the phone today just chatting about it. Talking about Heavenly Father's time table. About giving ourselves a little credit for the stress our minds and bodies go thru. And about how grateful we are for our collective 5 BOYS! (not including wonderful husbands!)
I have a friend in the ward who recently asked me why I thought it was that I miscarried twice between Aiden and Zack. I think she thought maybe there was a physical problem that I could enlighten her with, she having miscarried recently as well. The truth though is that medically speaking miscarriages - even two in a row - are rather uneventful. Medically speaking. I can never deny the intense emotional pain that exists in being so excited to welcome another of Heavenly Father's spirits into your home only to lie on the ultrasound table, alone in a new state, far away from my mom and realize that sweet excitement doesn't have a heartbeat. Maybe never did. Maybe only produced enough pregnancy hormone to read positive on the test and then slowly fade away again. But let me explain the peace I have felt since this friend asked me about my miscarriages (not Gina, the friend in my ward). I was able to tell her that I have no doubt that the only reason I miscarried is that Heavenly Father knew I couldn't handle Aiden and a 14 month old. He knew that I would have a REALLY hard time handling Aiden and a 20 month old. I feel so strongly that His communication with me (had I been in tune enough then) would have gone something like this:
"Tiff, I'm so pleased that you and Jeremy want to raise more of my beloved spirit children. I want to send them to you. But right now Tiff, that would be a trial that you couldn't handle. I can't give you a trial that I know you can't handle. I've promised I'll never do that. So, I'm going to give you a different trial. You won't be able to carry these pregnancies for very long. I'll be here for you and cry with you when you find out they're gone. But be strong because I have a plan for you and this family you are working so hard at. I love you."
I am so grateful for the perspective that I have gained. I'm so blessed.
I am so glad for good friends who inspire me. Gina is one of the best! She is taking her trial in stride and has faith that she will have the same eternal perspective that Heavenly Father has for her. She is a great mom. She is hard on herself, but she's great. She worries that she has crazy kids, but we are mothers of boys. They chase spiders and climb 8 ft ladders and stand on their heads and bounce off of walls. They are boys. But they are our little strippling warriors. So to Gina, and all of my wonderful friends, I love you! You are all amazing examples of what good mothers are. Thanks for teaching me!

Scentsy Party

For those of you who read my blog and live in AZ, who I don't have an email address for... consider this your invitation! I'm having a Scentsy Party on Tuesday Nov. 18th from 6pm to 8pm.
I'd love to see you all... and since we never got around to having that "come see our house bbq"... you can come see my house!
Come smell yummy candles, eat yummy treats, or just visit!
I can't wait to see you all! Email me if you need my address or phone #! swmngrd99@yahoo.com

I'm gonna eat you up Zack!