Life in Dominica

Well, after a month of being here in Dominica, we are gradually getting used to everything: the bugs, the heat, the humidity, the lack of AC, the scarcity of dairy products, the shortage of grocery items in general, etc.

We live on the main road in Picard, right across the street from the school. It is nice because Jason can come home easily for lunch and dinner sometimes and I can also go hang out in the air-conditioned buildings on campus when I can't handle the heat of our apartment anymore. The downsides are that it is a little noisy here and the apartment is a little older than others in Picard.

It is quite the adventure doing laundry here. Luckily I have a washing machine; lots of people don't. However, it is a long process to do a load of laundry. The washing machine is on our back balcony since we don't have washer hookups. So, first I load the washer with the clothes, put the soap in and all that. Sounds normal right? Then it gets exciting. I pull the hose up from where it is hanging on a looped shoelace down below and put it in the top of the washer. Then I run outside and down the stairs to the backyard to turn on the water. I wait down there and listen until I hear the washer start because that's when I know it has enough water. I go back upstairs and pull the hose out of the top of the washer and hang it over the side of the balcony again. I go do something else for about 10 minutes until I hear the water drain out of the washer and the washer stop moving. Then it's time for the rinse cycle. I go put the hose in the top of the washer again, run downstairs, turn on the water, wait until I hear it start, run back upstairs, and take the hose out. Then I wait until I hear the water drain out again and do the whole process again for the second rinse cycle. I never knew a washer had two rinse cycles until I had to fill it up by hand. :) Once the washer is done, I have to hang the wash on the lines on our balcony to dry hoping that it doesn't rain too hard that day. Anyway, that's the process. I have a new appreciation for clothes pins and washer hookups among other things. Hopefully I can get a new hose soon that will hook to the back of the washer and I just have to turn on the water once.

Anyway, I don't mean to complain. We really are doing well and enjoying our time here. Some days are definitely overwhelming and make me miss the conveniences we have in the States, but I have decided that I need to be more positive about our time here. The island is beautiful and it definitely has its perks. We have beautiful sunsets over the Caribbean Sea, beautiful views, etc. This very morning, our little family walked down to the beach for an early morning swim. The water felt so nice; it wasn't even cold. That's my kind of ocean swimming. :)

The kids are both doing well. They are both FINALLY getting over their coughs. Savannah is growing like crazy and becoming quite a cute chubby baby. She loves smiling when people smile at her and she likes to be on her tummy. William is doing well too. He is learning new words every day. It's fun to hear him talk. His favorite word is still "tractor," but he also says, "apple," "bowl," "bread," "cracker," "wawa," "bed," "truck," "car," "McQueen," "Nana" (Savannah), "baby," "ball," "cow," "dog," "hat," "toes," "eyes," "nose," "ears" and others I'm sure I'm forgetting. He also does the animal sounds for cows, horses, sheep, dogs, cats, chickens, ducks, elephants, and lions. His Aunt Camilla taught him most of those before we left Utah. He will still surprise me with new animal sounds that I didn't know that he knew. :) We'll be reading a book and he'll see the animal and start making its noise. It's pretty cute. Oh, like monkey. He does a good monkey sound too.

Well, I'm going to try to be more consistent about updating this blog to record and share our adventures here on the island of Dominica, but that's all for now, folks.

William won't go to sleep unless I lie down with him,
 so sometimes Savannah falls asleep there too cuddling with me.
You can see the empty space where I was before I got up to take the picture.

She loves kicking her legs. Sorry, I can't figure out how to rotate this video.

William threw diapers all over Savannah one day while she was napping.

He loves his Mater truck from Grandma Annie

Skipping rocks on the Caribbean Sea

Special Guest Post: Medical School

             Sometimes one of our guest writers will appear on this blog to write about his experiences in medical school. This is the first installment of many future posts (we can only hope there are many but we will see what happens when clinical rotations and residency start).

First two weeks are in the books here at Ross University School of Medicine (RUSM) in Dominica (Not to be confused with the Dominican Republic) and I can’t tell if it has been fast or slow. All I know is that tomorrow at 8am I have my first exam, or as they call it at RUSM “Mini 1,” and I feel okay about it. They weight the first mini less for the first semester students so that mistakes can be made and it won’t count too much against your grade, as this one will only be 10% of it. So 50 questions stand between me and a day off. I won’t get my score till Thursday so I can enjoy the rest of the day tomorrow no matter what happens on the mini.

This first mini is based on biochemistry, microbiology, anatomy and some behavioral science material. If it seems like a lot, that is because it is. I’ve heard two analogies about the amount of material that you have to intake while in medical school. One is the the idea of drinking from a fire hose. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OXc5ltzKq3Y I think you get the picture. Four hours of lecture everyday with an expectation to learn and know it all before your mini. I felt like I have been drinking from it at an okay rate but there is a lot that gets past me (maybe not what you want to hear about your budding physician).

The second analogy that I have heard is about eating two pancakes everyday. Say you are given 2 pancakes to eat and digest each day. For a couple of days you eat all of them, but one day maybe you don’t finish one and leave it for tomorrow, but tomorrow you have to eat the two from the new day and the one from the left over. So you have three pancakes and maybe you get through them all or you don’t. As time goes on you feel a little sick or off your game and you don’t finish one of your pancakes so you save one for the next day. And before you know it you have 10 pancakes to eat and the next day is the pancake championship. You get the picture. http://giphy.com/gifs/hiQndt1hi1Lva  So I have the challenge of eating pancakes everyday and drinking from the fire hose of information to quench my thirst.

The other day was the White Coat Ceremony. It was a nice ceremony; one with some pomp and circumstance. The President of Dominica was there, their PM, and their director of Tourism and Legal Affairs (I don’t know why the director of tourism is also their legal affairs director..oh well), the dean of the campus as well as the dean of the school. So pretty official, except I don’t think the President’s secret service detail got the memo on the dress code for the even since they came in jeans and bright button down shirts. I liked the ceremony once it started but I was really apprehensive about going because I felt like I hadn't achieved anything that merited the honor of wearing the white coat. I also dislike the attention, a little.  I think, or I thought at that time, that it would be  nicer to dawn the coat after the initials MD are attached to my name. Before the ceremony I told Michelle, through texts, about my feelings and she was nice to calm my concerns about the whole day. So before the ceremony I was apprehensive and as the ceremony started I started to feel better about life, thanks to Michelle’s help and realizing that the ceremony was to celebrate the commencement of the journey rather than mark the end of Medical School. When I realized that, I thought about how this related to baptism and how it was in fact a type of baptism. A baptism into a different life and the same way that baptism is the first step in the gospel, it only marks the first step, so now comes the step of enduring to the end.

So now I leave you. Hopefully those that are reading this are doing well. I had a nice day off from studying today, it was good to feel like a dad again instead of a drifter who only came by to eat. It was nice to relax, focus on family, and faith. Not necessarily in that order. I think Michelle appreciated the extra help too. My mission president went through medical school and said that he probably didn't get to be the valedictorian because he didn’t study on Sundays. But, what he lost in study time he gained in strengthening family relationships. I don’t think I am valedictorian material but I hope to emulate that lifestyle and give my family the time they deserve. And although the kids are small now and may not remember me not studying, I will.

“No other success can compensate for failure in the home”- David O. McKay

Jason

P.S. We found out the reason why we had so many ants on our floor. Two dead small lizards under one of our couches. Try to make that a selling point, mister director of tourism.

Savannah's birth story

So, Savannah is almost 3 months old, but I wanted to get this on here. I'm going to change the date on it, so it fits on the blog more chronologically. Anyway, here's the delivery story. I started having contractions around 7 or 8 AM and they were pretty consistent-every 5-8 minutes or so and they lasted about 30 seconds. Well, they kept going like that for a while without getting much closer together or longer. It depended a lot on what I was doing. If I were laying down, they would be less frequent. Anyway, Dan and Lise left around 9 to go to the airport to fly home. Then Jason went to work around 10 and said to call him when I needed to go to the hospital. Well, I did a few things--gave William a bath, took Jennis to get some piano music, packed a hospital bag, called the hospital and pre-registered (I know I'm a procrastinator)--and then around 12:30, I sent Jason a text saying that we should probably head to the hospital around 1. He got home around that time and he packed a bag and we left. But before we went to the hospital we went to Carl's Jr. because I was starving and I knew they wouldn't let me eat once we got there. So, yeah, I was having pretty painful contractions at this point, but we ate our hamburgers and then headed over to the hospital. 

We went up to Labor & Delivery (one of the hospital staff offered to get me a wheelchair on our way in when I stopped walking for a contraction) and got checked in and taken to a room. The nurse got me hooked up to the heartbeat monitor and the contraction monitor and checked me and I was dilated to a 4. She said, "Well, I'll check on you in about a half hour and if you've made progress we can admit you." Well, after a half hour I hadn't made much progress, but she said, "I can tell you are in pain with these contractions, so I hate to send you home. Let me check with the Doctor and I will ask him." About ten minutes later I saw a note pop up on the monitor where they record everything that is going on and it said something about how the Dr. said to admit me. Well, sure enough, the doctor came in a few minutes later and said, "Yeah, we're going to admit you, so you can get an epidural. Then, after that I'll come and break your water and that should help you make progress." So, I got an IV and then about a half hour later, around 5, the anesthesiologist came in and gave me an epidural. It was different this time because he had me sit up on the bed while he gave it to me. With William, I got to lay on my side while I got the epidural. Anyway, about a half hour after I got the epidural (5:30ish), the Dr. came back to break my water and I was already dilated to a 7, so that was good news. The Dr. broke my water and there was a little meconium in the amniotic fluid, so they said they would have a team on hand to make sure the baby hadn't gotten any in her lungs or anything. I was still feeling a little pain from the contractions, but it was so much better than before the epidural. The doctors changed shifts at 6, so the new Dr. came and checked on me around 6:30 and she said I was at a 10 and ready to start pushing. They got everything set up and I started pushing with contractions around 6:45. For some reason it was a little harder for me to tell when I was having a contraction with my legs up ready to push, but I pushed when I wanted and when they told me to andSavannah was born at 7:02 PM. Jason got to cut the cord right after she was born and they took her to the baby bassinet thingy so they could make sure she was doing okay. I didn't get to hold her for a little while because of that and I was a little worried because they weren't saying anything. But she was fine. 

She weighed 8 lbs. 11 oz. and was 21 inches long. Everyone had been telling me that she was going to be smaller than William-probably 6 lbs. Even the doctors said that. But then when the Dr. saw her head, she said, "I think you have an 8 lb baby here!" So, yeah, that was a surprise. But I didn't tear too much. I am healing much faster than I did with William (I had an episiotomy with him). 

It happened...

You know those things that you hope your child never does? Those things you hear other mothers tell you that just make you cringe? Well, one of those happened this morning. I was lying on the floor in William's room while he played with some toys nearby. He gets up before 6 every day, so I try to feed him some food and then take a little nap while he plays until it is a more reasonable hour (like 6:30 :) ). Anyway, in my half-asleep state I hear him start spitting. He has started to spit when he doesn't like something or when I tell him something is yucky. So, I get up and go try to figure out what he is spitting out. No, it wasn't dirt. He has eaten that many times already (including twice yesterday). It had this orange-brown color to it and it didn't take me long to figure out what it was once I smelled it. He had somehow gotten some of his poop from the back of his diaper that he had just filled to overflowing. I said loudly "Oh no!" and that brought Jason from the other room to help clean up the little stinker. We changed the diaper, gave him a bath and got him back to our nice-smelling little boy, but I still just cringe when I think about it. I don't know if I'll feel okay sharing a spoon with him for the next little while. Good thing it was yesterday that he used my toothbrush and not later today!

Christmas-Lots of Pictures to catch up

Sorry for the overload of pictures, but I figured this was the easiest way to do a quick update. 

11 months old!

Christmas Eve!

We got to spend Christmas and New Year's in California with Jason's family. It was lots of fun!

Despite having never opened a present before,
William seemed to know exactly what to do.

Cousins! These boys are just 3 weeks apart.

Best present ever!

Christmas Day!

Cousins waiting on the stairs to go down and see their presents

I have to open more presents?

Enjoying the warm California Christmas

I got to talk to my sister Rebekah who was actually about 45 minutes away from where we were.

William's 1st Birthday!

Poor kid was sick, so he felt pretty miserable all day.

Trying to enjoy the beach, but still feeling sick

I think he just wanted to sleep

Attempt at a family picture. William wasn't happy about stopping.

Happy Birthday song!

He did feel a little better that night after a long afternoon nap

New Year's!

We got to see some of the floats for the Rose Parade

I think this is a funny picture. William was trying to climb up me to look at the float behind us.

Fall Update

Well, here's a quick update with lots of pictures. We had a great summer filled with trips to Arizona, California, and Texas as well as family reunions and lots of fun. Fall brought us back to real life with busy schedules. Jason got a job as an autism aide at a preschool, so he gets to help autistic 3-5 year olds learn behavioral training and lots of other fun stuff. He also got another job working with BYU catering again which means he is super busy now. Sometimes several days go by that he doesn't even see William awake because he leaves early and comes home late. But we feel very blessed that he is able to work and save up some money for the dearth ahead that will be medical school.

Here are some picture updates on William:

3 months! William loves to smile and laugh. If you catch his eye and smile and laugh, he will too.
He does this cute sleep laugh where he smiles and his body shakes from sleep giggles.
When he sees you smiling at him he puts his hands to his face like he is being shy.

4 months! William is a very happy and content baby. He loves to smile!

5 months! Forgot the shirt though. Oops! At 5 months, William learned to sit up by himself!

6 months!
During this month William started army crawling! He also got his first tooth!

7 months!
William started pulling himself up to a standing position.
He learned how to crawl on his hands and knees and how to go from crawling to sitting.

8 Months!
At month 8, William had his other bottom front tooth pop through.
He also started sleeping for 12 straight hours most nights, which I loved!

9 months! He pulls himself up to a standing position and cruises all over holding onto the edge of the couch or whatever else is close. He has also become quite a speedy crawler. When he hears loud noises (vacuum, blender, hair dryer), he starts to cry and crawls quickly to me. He has never been a very cuddly baby, so I love that he comes to me for comfort.

In September, we went to Chalk the Block at the Riverwoods. It was really neat to see how talented people are. I was very impressed especially since I have no skills in the art department.

My friend who is 7 months pregnant did this one with her husband!

A few weeks ago we drove the Alpine Loop for Family Home Evening. Jason and I have wanted to do that for a while since he had never done it and it had been a while for me. It was so beautiful.

That's us for now! Happy Fall!