The Destructive Duo!

Well, it's official: Zach is mobile! He started crawling about a month ago (he was 8 months old at the time), and is now probably the world's fastest little guy on four....appendages?

Anyway, since he has become so mobile, he goes wherever he wants, which is usually wherever Johnny is. It's actually pretty cute to watch him try to keep up with his big brother - I think that may actually be why he's so fast. Either that, or he's learned how to teleport. If we open a door to outside, he's right there within 3 seconds, no matter where he was in the house!

The real problem with Zach's newfound mobility is that Johnny's little moments of trouble are now twice as bad. He has the ideas, and Zach follows right along! It's a dangerous combination. We know if there's a long period of silence, there's probably been some sort of disaster: a purse relieved of its contents, a new technological something or other thrown in the toilet, a dirty diaper being chewed on, something small (you name it) lodged in Zach's cheeks (yes, he has a few chipmunk qualities), all the movies from the bottom shelf opened up and strewn across the living room, and the list goes on. I have to admit, aside from the frustration and messes, I really do love the spice that these two bring into our lives!

Another quick Johnny-ism that makes me smile - he now communicates if he has a problem. He'll come to me and say, "Uh-oh," and proceed to drag me across the house to find one of his cars stuffed too far under the bed, a fruit snack stuck in the air vent, etc. I love it! Every day brings a new adventure, and I just couldn't be more thankful that these two little hoodlums are MINE!

Happiness!

After my last post, I figured I should definitely update all the happy things going on in our lives! (You don't have to read the surgery post, I mostly just wanted to write it down somewhere while it was still fresh in my mind.)

Anywho, here are all our happy updates!

1. Johnny is talking! He's 22 months old. It's basically just one word at a time (his favorites are sugar, ice, "Shysha" for Aunt Tysha, and ball), but he's working on stringing them together (i.e. "Bye, Da!" and "No way!").

2. Zach is a scooting machine! He only goes backwards, but he rolls a lot too, so he pretty much gets wherever he wants to go. He's been rocking back and forth on his hands and knees, so it's only a matter of time before he just takes off! He's 7 months old and is seriously THE happiest child alive.

3. Paul and I started a fence business. It's called Blue Diamond Fence Company, and it's going great! Our first job was a Parade of Homes house, so we've gotten our names out pretty well. We kind of put everything on hold while I was sick, but we're hoping to pick everything back up this week. Paul is still working at Alsco, but the idea of the business is for Paul to manage it while his guys do the labor. So far, it's been working great!

4. The same week that we started the fencing business, we traded in our cars for a van and a truck! We love them, and we found great deals on both so we only financed $4,000 total!

5. My sister Kelsey won the Price is Right in April! When I say she won, I mean she WON! $54,000 was her grand total in prizes, and it was CRAZY fun to watch!

6. Kyle and "Shysha" got engaged! They're getting married August 13th in the Twin Falls Temple, and we are seriously SO excited. Tysha fits into our family so well, it's crazy to think she's only known us for a year! We love her!

That's pretty much it as far as our exciting news! We're having a great time with our little family, and we really couldn't be any happier together! :)

Surgery City!

Well, for some reason, our little family has decided to keep the health industry in business this past 7 months! We've racked up over $50,000 in medical bills over that span, and the number is still growing. As of right now, we only owe about $2,000 thanks to Paul's aMAZing insurance, which we are just so thankful for.

Needless to say, between Johnny's kidney surgery, my emergency C-section with Zach, and my emergency gallbladder removal last week, we are eager to move on to greener (and healthier) pastures! After Zach was born, I noticed I had a really hard time with digestion for a while. I thought it was maybe just part of C-section recovery or something, but then it started getting worse instead of better. I tried not to complain about it too much, but let's just say...I was miserable. The first time I had a real attack, I thought it was food poisoning. Then when it happened a few more times, I realized no one could possibly be THAT unlucky with food poisoning, so maybe I had a food allergy. I started trying to tweak my diet but that didn't help me either. Finally about a month ago, I decided to tell Paul what was really going on. I hadn't been telling anyone, but I would get really sick 3 or 4 nights out of the week. Paul goes to bed early so I didn't want to bug him about it, but then I finally couldn't take it anymore.

I had done a little research and discovered that the location of the sharp pain and all of the other symptoms were indicative of gallbladder disease. I told Paul I suspected it might be a gallbladder problem and that I was going to start eating differently. However, about a week after I told him this, I had a MASSIVE gallbladder attack and almost went to the emergency room. The pain started ebbing a little, so I decided I would wait until morning so we wouldn't have to pay huge ER bills.

First thing the next morning, I called the doctor and scheduled an appointment for 1:45. At noon, it hurt too much for me to wait any longer, so I had Kelsey come watch my boys while I drove myself to the ER. There they told me it would be at least a couple hours before I could see anyone, so I decided to just wait it out until my scheduled appointment. Dr. Roberts decided my symptoms probably were gallbladder problems, but they would have to do an ultrasound to double check. They couldn't schedule one until the next morning, so she sent me home with pain killers. The ultrasound, however, did not reveal any stones. The only next step was to do a HIDA scan (SUPER not fun scan where they make your gallbladder contract and watch it to see if it's doing its job), which they couldn't schedule until the following Tuesday.

SO.....we waited out the weekend, me on pain pills and basically just dying while family and friends helped with the kids. Tuesday finally came around, and I went and had the HIDA/torture scan done. I called the doctor later that afternoon, and (surprise!) she wasn't in that day! The super nice on-call doctor (I think it was Dr. Kohtz) finally called me back and personally contacted all the surgeons in town so I could get the fastest surgery possible. What a relief! It was still 2 days later that Dr. McKain did the surgery, but from a surgeon's standpoint, that's really fast.

I finally had surgery 10 days after my initial ER visit, and what a relief it was to have it done! It's been a rough week of recovery, but I can already tell a difference in the things I'm able to eat. All I know is that I am SO grateful for the medical knowledge we have today. I'm also grateful to a Heavenly Father who loves me enough to teach me patience and long-suffering. If it wasn't for these hard times, I wouldn't be able to experience so much joy during the good times. The law of opposition comes to mind frequently when I'm going through things like this. I know that in order to truly appreciate the beautiful blessings I've been given (and I HAVE been given so many), I have to endure trials. I'm just glad this one's behind me now!

Our Little Miracle - God Has Remembered

Thanks to many prayers and a few miracles, we are now a healthy, happy family of 4! Baby Zachary Allen Young was born on Tuesday, December 28th, 2010 at 2:39 p.m. He weighed 6lbs and 9 oz. and was 19 inches long. We couldn't be more in love with our new little man!

This story is truly miraculous, so I have to share. We were scheduled to be induced on Tuesday morning (because our insurance starts over with the new year), so we showed up bright and early and as excited as two parents can be! The labor was going normally - albeit rather slowly - and we were just waiting for the arrival of our new baby boy. We were planning to name him Miles Alexander, and that's what we'd been calling him for 4 months.

Suddenly it hit me that he might not end up looking like a Miles, and something just felt wrong about the name. I turned to Paul and told him I thought we might need to reconsider. He agreed and we both thought that the name Zachary had a good ring to it. We couldn't find a name book at the time so we weren't sure what it meant, but we thought it sounded good.

Fast-forward about 15 minutes. Everything was still going great, and I was dilated to a 5. I had asked for a priesthood blessing, so Paul called our brother-in-law Ben and they gave me one. Paul blessed us that the doctors would know what to do when the time came, and that we would both be fine and healthy. I remember being concerned with the "when the time comes" phrase, but I hoped it didn't mean there would be any problems.

About 15 minutes after that, we did start having problems. Every time I had a contraction, the baby's heart rate would drop more and more. The lowest we saw it was at a 48 (his normal heart rate hovers around 140). Everyone was becoming more and more concerned, until finally the doctor came in and said we were going to do an emergency C-section because something was obviously wrong.

That was at 2:20. They wheeled me out of the room at 2:30, and we heard the first cry of our baby at 2:39. The cord was wrapped around his neck and he was completely blue. When they showed him to me, they said,"Congratulations, you had a smurf!" He pinked up very quickly thanks to Aunt Amanda, our amazing NICU nurse!

Part of the miracle of this story was how scared I wasn't during this whole procedure. I had received a wonderful blessing and I knew deep down that everything was going to be okay. I kept crying on the c-section table because I knew the blessing was working.

We heard later on that if we had waited 15 or 20 more minutes, our Zachary could have strangled. It is truly a miracle that we have our baby boy with us. Paul brought him over to me and we decided that his name was definitely Zachary, and we decided to use Allen for a middle name after Paul's dad. It wasn't until a few days later that I discovered what the name Zachary means - "God has remembered." He did remember us that day, and I know He loves our little Zachary just as much as we do!