Cooperina

I guess he wanted to be a pretty pretty princess like his baby sister.

Shiloh's baby blessing

Today was Shiloh's baby blessing. Shiloh's blessing was absolutely beautiful. Each baby blessing day has been very special to me. But this time it was a little different for a few reasons. ONE: She is a girl and I got a glimpse into how fun it can be to dress girls up, she looked like a little bride. TWO: The night before I went into the hospital to have Shiloh, Jeff and my Dad gave me a comfort blessing. After the blessing my Dad leaned down and told me about well...I guess you could call it an experience he had that involved Shiloh. What he told me took my breath away for a split second and almost made me cry. Which if you know me, it takes A LOT to make me cry. Don't ask me what he told me, I won't tell you as it is something that is too special to me to share. THREE: I am humbled each time as Jeff gives our new baby their blessing. Humbled at the tremendous love I feel from my Heavenly Father for me and my baby. With the arrival of each new baby I feel this overwhelming pressure to raise them right, to teach them to gospel, to do for them everything my Heavenly Father wants and needs me to do in order to help them return to him. When Jeff pronounces their blessing I am reminded that I can do all the things I feel pressured to do because if I couldn't, my Heavenly Father would not have entrusted these children to me.

Shiloh looked so beautiful in her dress! I couldn't help taking so many pictures of her in her dress.One big brother, who loves his "Shiloh Diloh".
I also had to get some of her dress without her in it to hopefully capture some of the details in her dress.

Our family of five.

Us with Jeff's mom and my parents.

Family that came for the blessing, minus Bill and Rachel who both had to leave early. Most of our family was not able to make it for one reason or another, sick kids at home, working, or out of town.

In Shiloh's blessing circle was:
Daddy
Grandpa Meador
Uncle Jared
Uncle Bill
Uncle Mike Leeds
Bishop Springer

Newborn Pictures

Last Saturday, November 27th, Shiloh had her first modeling photo shoot. The photos were taken by Cali Jenae Photography. Cali is the daughter of a wonderful couple in our ward. If you would like to check out her blog click: here. I love love love all the pictures I have seen so far and can't wait to see the rest. The hard part is going to be which ones to hang on the wall.

Look at those piggies poking through the yarn. LOVE IT!

Big Brother Lovin'

This modeling gig is so tiring.....yawn.

So which one is your favorite?

This is how...

Jeff has a snowball fight.
(sorry the video looks a little fuzzy, I shot it from inside the house in front of the screen)

The Case of the Peanut Allergy

The Masked Peanut strikes again!


Wow. What a day. It started out well enough. Taking Cooper and Mason to school. But as soon as I turned on the street to drop Mason off, my pager went off. Cardiac/Respiratory Arrest about two blocks from the school. I pretty much kicked Mason out at the sidewalk and had him walk up to his classroom, and took off down the street. I found CPR already in progress. I took over the scene and began doing chest compressions. I continued to do so for about 35 minutes, while we got ready to load the patient in the ambulance. I made it back home and within a couple minutes got a call from Cooper's preschool that he was puking.

OK. So I went to pick him up. No indication as to why he was puking. I take him back home and he seems to be doing fine at first, until he pukes again, and again. Crystyne is cleaning up puke and I am changing a dirty diaper, while the diaper is off, Shiloh sprays every where with a geyser of pee. (I thought only boys did that. Wrong!) I notice at this time, Cooper is wheezing badly, so I have Crystyne get a treatment ready and give it to him. While he is taking the treatment, we notice he is scratching all over. He has a rash. Oh great! He got into something he wasn't supposed to. Benadryl time. I take him up to give him a cool bath and as soon as I strip his clothes, I realized how extensive his rash is. I wash him quickly and tell Crystyne I am going to take him to the hospital, that he is having a reaction to something. I throw him in the car, wheezing, itchy, red as a lobster, full blown anaphylactic reaction and rush to the hospital on the crappy wet snow covered streets.

We make it to the hospital and they immediately rush him back. His O2 sats were only 87% (Normal on room air really should be above 95%) and he was slightly cyanotic (blue) in the lips (lack of oxygen.) The nurses immediately start an IV and administers Epinephrine, Benadryl, Solu-medrol (steroid) and a Albuterol nebulizer treatment. Although he cried a little, Cooper was so brave during this whole ordeal. After a while the rash starts to clear and his O2 sats start to rise. He falls asleep and spends the next hour and a half or so laying on me just trying to recuperate (no pun intended).



He also had a chest x-ray. Finally three and a half hours later we are discharged from the hospital, with orders to give him a couple more doses of Benadryl at home. The nurses gave him an Ernie (from Sesame Street) stuffed toy. I could tell by the end that he was doing better, because he was talking to the nurse.

The doctor said it was the worst anaphylactic reaction he has ever seen, and the only thing I should have done, that I didn't do was that I should have given him the Epi-Pen before I came to the hospital.

Cooper is now doing well, and proud of his "battle wounds."


The culprit, you may ask. Apparently a peanut got mistakenly given to him at preschool. I have no ill will toward the preschool. Accidents happen. I am just glad I was home and not away at work in Colfax. I am very thankful for the medical knowledge that Heavenly Father has blessed me with and the competent caregivers at Holy Family Hospital.

Now with the snow, and couple rounds of snow blowing later. I am pooped. I just think that although it sucks only working part time, there is probably a reason that I haven't found full time employment yet. For events like this.

Snow fun

We just keep getting more and more snow. Every time I look outside it is snowing. It is snow right now as I type this. Even more of a reason for me to not go anywhere with a new baby. Mason and Cooper sure are enjoying it though. I don't think Jeff is enjoying is quite as much, having to clear the driveway and all, but having a snow blower does make it a bit more bearable. After snow blowing today, all three went in the back yard to try to build a snowman. The snow wasn't wet enough for that. But they made the best of it anyway.

Mason and Jeff buried Cooper in the snow.

Then they made snow angels.

The finished product of Jeff's snow angel.

Deck the Halls

As long as Jeff and I have been married, we have put up the Christmas tree the day after Thanksgiving. This year was no different. The boys, and I am including Jeff in this, were VERY ready to decorate as soon as they got up, but Jeff used some self control and waited for me and Shiloh to wake up first.

Mason...ready to get this show on the road!

Cooper....ready to bust that bin open to see what was inside.

Shiloh....couldn't care less. She was just happy to have a full tummy and a warm blanket.

And the fun begins! Here Mason and Cooper are helping Jeff spread out the branches of the tree.

Now time for the ornaments.

Cooper kept putting the ornaments in the same spot. He also kept telling us that the ornaments needed to go up really high, so Shiloh can't reach them. Silly boy!

All done with the tree and ready to enjoy a candy cane. Cooper was throwing a "fit" because he couldn't have two candy canes.

Last year we found a 3 foot tree on clearance after Christmas, so we got it for the boys' room. Mason has such a great memory. He asked me today if I remember going to Target to get the tree and Dad and Cooper stayed in the car while he and I went in to get it. Yup. That is exactly what happened too.

Jeff won these nutcrackers a few years ago in my family's white elephant exchange. I love them! Mason and Cooper have loved playing with them today, making their mouths move and talk to each other.

This is where we have hung our stockings since moving into this house. Each year it makes me miss having a fire place mantel, like in our old house....maybe someday I will have one again to hang my stockings from.

Thanksgiving 2010

This year we had a quiet Thanksgiving at home. We had ham instead of turkey, because ham is just plain better than turkey! Our neighbors had plans to go to his parents house, two hours away on Thanksgiving, but their changed at the last minute, so we invited them to have dinner with us. I feel like a real grown up now that we did Thanksgiving all by our selves.

First week of life

We have had a really quiet week, lounging around the house enjoying our little Shiloh. Mason and Cooper are so in love with their little sister and I think she likes them too, as long as Cooper doesn't stick his finger in her eye. Gotta watch that one around her.

This is Mason's new favorite activity, holding his Shiloh while watching TV. I'm sure he would hold her all day long, if she didn't need to nurse. Darn that nursing thing and mom having to take her to do it.
Shiloh is a really content baby. She only cries when she is cold and really only fusses when hungry. The only time she really screamed was when I gave her a bath. Just getting in, not sure if she likes it or not.
Nope. She officially does not like the bath. (Going back to the whole being cold thing.) Hopefully she will learn to like baths.
Poor little girl, look at that pouty face.


Shiloh loves to sleep. I think she is our best sleeper over all. Shiloh sleeps for about 3 hours, wakes up to eat, and falls back to sleep for about 3 hours. This is her "routine" so far. She doesn't like to sleep in her bassinet, I think she doesn't like the wide open space. So for now, at night, she sleeps in our bed, between us. During the day she sleeps in her swing or in one of our arms. Some would say we are spoiling her and teaching her a bad habit of always needing to sleep with us. Whatever. We did this with our boys for the first 6-8 weeks of their lives too. Then we start to transition them into their bassinet or crib. Our boys rarely ever sleep in our bed and never have, so I doubt we will have an issue this time around either. We are not spoiling our baby. You really can't spoil a newborn anyway. There I said it.
She loves to have her hands up by her face. One day this week I caught her sleeping with her hands over her face. Maybe it was too bright for her liking.

It's been much quieter than I expected on the visitor front too. We've only had a few visitors. That is very surprising to me since Jeff and I both have large families who, for the most part, live in Spokane. I really love to have visitors. I love to have conversations with adults. I love that visitors break up the day to day tasks that come with taking care of a newborn. So I guess for me, the only thing that would have made this week even better, would have been to have more visitors.

Shiloh with her Great Grandpa Long

Shiloh with her Great Grandma Long

Shiloh with her Grandpa Meador
Shiloh with her Grandma Meador


Shiloh had a well baby check today. Everything with her is look good. She weighs 6 lbs 1oz, so we have to take her back in next week to have her weighed again to make sure she gains back her birth weight.