4 Months

Happy St. Patrick's Day!

Shiloh is 4 months old today. Here she is sporting her lucky shirt.

I love her eyes in this picture.

Look at her muffin top in this one. She is wearing 6--9 month clothes. These pants are a little tight in the thighs and gut. She is built just like Cooper. She probably won't be able to wear jeans until she is older and has walked off the chub. Poor girl, at least she can wear dresses. Cooper couldn't wear jeans until he was about 18 months old unless they were like 3T, but then they were really long.

Shiloh has switched from just sucking her thumb to sucking on her whole hand. She usually has at least two fingers in her mouth.

She is a very calm baby. I remember the boys being very calm too, which I was always grateful for. This time I find I am so much more grateful for her calm nature. If she is hungry as long as she can see me, she doesn't cry, she just follows me with her eyes. It's like she is saying, "OK Mom I know you see me I know you know I am hungry and so I'm just going to follow you with my eyes to make sure that I am on your to-do list". She is even this way when she is 1+ hours past her normal eating time.

She goes down for bed between 8 and9pm and usually wakes up only once to eat, then goes right back to sleep until around 8am. She takes one short nap in the morning (like 1 hour), then she takes a long nap in the afternoon (like 3-4 hour), and sometimes will take another short nap in the early evening.

Busy

I feel like I have not blogged in a long time. I think about it often but something else always takes precedence. I have been staying busy with taking care of the kids, trying to keep the house clean, my calling in young womens at church, and SCHOOL!

My life skills class is pretty easy, but man my Book of Mormon class keeps me busy reading. I am a slow reader, so it probably takes me longer to read through everything than it takes everyone else in the class. The reading assignments are never the same. Sometimes we are assigned 15 pages to read and 1 chapter in the student manual one week. Then the next week we will be assigned 40 pages and 3 chapters in the student manual. I'm not complaining, I am learning a lot! But it takes up most of my free time. Last week, the instructor got a head of himself and assigned us too much to read, so this week I don't have any reading that has to be done, just an assignment, hence the time to blog. I am almost done with my 1st semester!

OH and just in case anyone cares, I am feeling all better now. It took over a month to feel 100%. After I had whatever I had...mono or some other crazy virus, I got a nasty head cold that lasted a few weeks.

Here are a few pictures from the last couple of weeks.

When Shiloh takes a bath, the boys usually want to join her. This time I let them.

I caught you baby!
Shiloh doing her two of her favorite things. Watching TV and sucking on her thumb.

Last week Mason and Cooper took turns each day being grumpy, rude, and mean to me. This particular day, it was Cooper's turn, so I made Cooper take a time out in their room. When I came back to talk to him, this is what I found. The day before this it was Mason's turn, so I made Mason take a time out in their room and I found him asleep on his bed. Maybe I should make them take a time out in their room everyday!

Mason has been working his whistling skills. It gets really annoying. Really fast. He is getting pretty good at whistling a tune.

Dainty

I love girl clothes! They are cuter, they have tons more details, and there are a lot more styles. I never knew what I was missing until I had Shiloh.
Now, I know there is nothing dainty about Shiloh but I love love love this outfit and it sure is dainty! It has a matching blanket as well.

Look at the ruffles on the sleeves and neck.

The ruffles on the bum are so cute!

Attention!

Shiloh slept for 11 hours straight last night! This is a first. One that I hope continues. There have been a few nights when she has slept 7 or 8 hours straight and that is great too. But it is a wonderful thing to put her to bed, get a few things done, go to bed myself and wake up in the morning before her! This was the first night that I slept straight though, and got 8.5 hours of sleep in probably 7 months! Now that is something to

celebrate!

I love these three!

Boys will be boys

I got this short video of the boys "playing". Notice who is on top? Yup, Cooper doesn't let Mason push him around.

3 Months

It's hard to believe, but this little girl is 3 months old! She is such a wonderful little girl. She is busy learning new things every day. She loves to learn through watching, or should I say STARING at things around her. We have had staring contests with her, she wins every time. This girl can go forever without blinking! She smiles, coos, laughs, and talks to us all the time. She has discovered her tongue and loves to stick it out all the time. Oh and look at those chubby cheeks, I love love love to pinch and kiss them!

I just got this video of her. Notice her kicking her legs and staring at her bears. Maybe if she kicks her legs enough, she will reach the bears. What do you think?

Sticker man

Cooper found these Cars stickers in a book and decided to stick them to himself. He even had one under his chin.

3 Valentines

Last night I went to my Dad's house while Jeff was at drill for the fire department. My Dad got some good shots of these three. I think these are the first pictures we have of the three of them together. Sad I know. Shiloh is almost 3 months old and these are the first.

Our little Valentine

Look at that cute little bum!

Epstein-Barr

For the last two weeks I have not felt well. I started out having flu like symptoms, without the puking. I would get so cold that my mussels would constrict and my toes and fingers would go completely numb. It would take me a long time (like an hour) to get warm again. Once I was warm, my body temp. would continue to go up. I felt like my internal body temp. was at least 120 degrees, like I was sitting in a sauna but only once did I have an actual fever. On top of all this, I was pretty weak and tired-more tired than I should be with having a little baby. After about a week of this, the freezing cold phase went away. I was left feeling like I was in a sauna all day long, ans still weak and tired.

This past Monday I finally called my OB's office thinking maybe I had mastitis or some other postpartum infection. I have had mastitis three times before, I wasn't feeling anything I like I had the other three times, but I figured they would be able to tell me what was wrong. I spoke to one of the nurses, who wasn't at all sure what I had, so she had me come right in to be checked out.

My doctor did a full body exam including an exam to see if I had a uterine infection. In the end everything checked out just fine, so he sent me to have blood drawn to check for different viruses. One of the viruses he thought I might have is the Epstein-Barr virus, or mono as we all know it as. He also gave me an antibiotic just in case I did have a mild case of mastitis.

I got a call from the nurse yesterday. I didn't fully understand everything she said, but basically my blood work came back saying that I did have the Epstein-Barr virus. That could mean that I had mono at one time, or was exposed to it at one time, or that I do have it now. The blood work also came back with an elevated IgG level, which if I understand that correctly, IgG are antibodies that attach to viruses to get rid of the virus.

I will go back in 4 weeks to have more blood drawn to check my levels again. I guess this will tell them if I do have mono, or if I was just exposed to mono as a kid. I guess once you are exposed, you will always be a carrier of the virus and it will be present in any blood work done.

If I do have mono, it can take 6-12 months to fully recover.

As of right now, the feeling like I'm in a sauna has gone away. I am just really weak and tired still and I have a constant headache.

$350.08 for $22.48

These past two weeks have been great weeks to build up my food storage again.

Albertsons is having another great sale. Pretty much the same sale as the one they had about 6 months ago when they had tons of ConArga products on sale. It was the same deal as last time. Buy $25 worth of any ConArga products and get a $10 catallina coupon to spend on your next transaction. The awesome part is that the $25 is on the regular price, so once the sale price came off at the register and you use a $10 off catallina (if you have a previous transaction) you can walk away with lots of stuff for free or next to free.

On Wednesday, even though I was not feeling well, (I could not pass up this great deal) I went to Albertsons with Shiloh (Mason and Cooper were both in school) and did 15 transactions. Here is what I got:

85 cans of Healthy Choice soup
15 cans of Chef BoyArDee ravioli
6 Hunts BBQ sauce
4 Hunts Ketchup
3 Pam cooking sprays
2 Wesson oil
2 Jars of Salsa
26 cans of green beans(on sale for $0.50)-6 to make 3 of my transactions $10 trans. so I could use my $10 off coupon and make the trans. free, and 20 cans so I could use my last $10 off coupon, making that trans. free as well.

My final out of pocket total was $22.48. If all this stuff wasn't on sale I would have spent $350.08. That is a 94% savings!

I am going to show my step mom how to do this sale later today, I just might pick up a few more things.

$60.32 for FREE!

This past week (Wed.-Tues.) Albertsons had Classico pasta sauce on sale for $2 each. Albertsons also had double your manufacture coupons coupons in their add. I found $1 off 1 Classico pasta sauce coupons on ebay. So when you double that manufacture coupon, it makes the sauce FREE! I got 16 jars of sauce, which would have been $60.32 at regular price.

And yes, I did know that Hunts pasta sauce was going to be on sale the very next day for pretty much $0, but can you say YUCK!?!?-when it comes to Hunts pasta sauce. It was well worth getting the coupons on ebay to have the better tasting sauce.

Interactions with Shiloh

Cooper is starting to be nice to Shiloh. He has not tried to sit on her face or awhile, nor has he tried to cover her mouth and nose with his hand. She has realized that he is not very nice to her when he comes around and I am not holding her. She has learned that all she has to do is cry and I will come to her rescue. One day this past week she was on her play mat. Cooper crawled on next to her, she didn't cry, he didn't try to hurt her. Maybe, just maybe we are making progress.Mason on the other hand, is very good with Shiloh. He does really well holding her. He is very proud that he can hold her without the support of a pillow now. It helps that she can hold her head up pretty well and can also sit up well with help. So yeah, he thinks he has mad skills, but really it is Shiloh who has the mad skills. This particular day I gave Shiloh to Mason to hold for a few minutes so I could use the bathroom or something. I came back and found her asleep in his arms. He was very proud that he got her to sleep. Again he has mad skills, so he thinks.

Our Anniversary

This past Tuesday was Jeff and my 8th wedding anniversary. We started a new tradition this year. I made a cake and we sang "happy birthday" to our family. Last night Jeff and I left the boys with my sister and we went out to dinner. I really didn't want to go out because I have not been feeling well for over a week now, but I am glad I did, because it was good to talk to Jeff about being sick and exhausted and how I was feeling and doing with that. We took Shiloh with us because she hadn't slept all day and I didn't want to leave a crabby baby with anyone. Turns out she slept the whole time we were at dinner.