Haircut

So, Cami finally got her first haircut. I've just been letting it grow till now and haven't really cared what it looks like. She won't let me put pigtails or anything in it, so it just kinda does it's own thing.

Now you ask, if you've been fine with her hair until now, what motivated you to finally cut it? Well, I'll tell you. Before I had kids I often looked at other women with their kids at the grocery store and their kids didn't have their hair done, their clothes were covered with food, their faces were dirty, etc. and I always told myself that I would never be one of those moms who just let my kids run wild and free.

Then, I was looking at Cami one day and I realized: that's exactly what I'd become. She was wearing lunch on her face and clothes and her hair had grown out to a mullet. My child looked like a dirty little hillbilly. I was not happy with myself for letting it get like this.

I hope I don't sound critical of other moms out there, because I'm learning how hard it is to handle more than one child and I realize now that it's really just easier to let your kids be kids and be dirty, but I never wanted to be like that.

So, I sat her down a few weeks ago and finally gave her a haircut! She wasn't too enthusiastic about it. She was far more interested in what was in the bathroom drawers, but I managed to at least chop off the mullet.
Here's a picture of the mullet. It's just a few long strands hanging down the middle of her back, and when her hair dried, it clumped together and then it looked like a nasty rat tail. Gross.

Here's the after picture. Her patience was just about exhausted by that point, so it was hard to continue to get her to hold still. But, the rat tail is gone and it's more or less the same length. I'm so proud of her for putting up with it as well as she did.

Sleepless nights

Remember how I said that if I got one post a month I was doing okay. Well, here's my April post. I'll try to post again, but can't promise anything.

So, I don't know how many people read all the way to the bottom of a post where it has the date and time stamp. If you do, you'll see that this post is being added at about 1:30 am. Now, you may ask, 'what are you doing up so late?' But you must be forgetting that I have a new baby. Ah, now doesn't that just explain it all?

Austin usually eats last at around 10:00 at night. Before that it's a steady feeding every two hours. Sometimes he wants to eat every hour, it gets old real fast. Back to the point. Once he eats at 10, I know that I now have several hours of down time, so I start doing things that I don't like being interrupted to do, like playing on the computer or reading a book or budgeting or other fun stuff like that. Soon I glance down at the clock and realize that it's nearly 1 in the morning. Oops, so much for going to bed early like I planned. Again.

By then I realize that Austin will be up to eat again at any time (he still only gives me four or five hours at a time each night), and that is why I'm up right now blogging. I know he'll be up within a half hour to eat and there's just no point in going to sleep before I have to feed him again.

So, since I'm up, here's some of the pictures I've taken of him recently. My mom has been pestering me to post more pictures of him so she can get to see what he looks like. So many people say that he's the spitting image of Sterling. I still don't see it.

We have a picture of Cami just like this. Sadie makes such a good little doggie mommie.

Cami also had this as her first bed. It only took about two weeks for Austin to grow out of it. He has his own crib now.

Like most moms, this is what I spend half my day doing.

Poor kid is going to be traumatized from having the camera shoved in his face all the time, but he's just so cute.

There's just something about a sleeping baby. So precious.

Relaxin in his chair. I wish I had a seat like this with a vibrator in it.

Oh, I hear a baby cry. That's my cue...

He's here!

My mom emailed me the other day saying that my little countdown thing for my pregnancy said that I was 40 weeks and 5 days along. Yeah, well, I'm actually not.

Austin Thayne Fenwick was born at 4:20 am on Friday, March 12th. He was 6 lbs 3 oz and 19 inches long. I should have posted sooner, but it's busy being a new mom, again!It was a wonderfully easy birth. Ladies, prepare to be jealous! Gents, feel free to stop reading now. I started having back pains the evening before while I was at my EMT class on campus. Not so much fun. I was in some serious pain. I got home and they kept getting worse, but I still wasn't sure I was in true labor. Some of you may know how that is. You just aren't sure and you don't want to be sent home from the hospital, so you wait and wait until it gets really painful. Well, we ended up leaving for the hospital at 11:00 pm. I don't know what it is about me having babies in the middle of the night. Our neighbor came over and stayed with Cami, who was sound asleep, until my mother-in-law arrived from Salt Lake. It was very nice and convenient.

I was talking to my mom the day before and she mentioned how some women have a lot of energy the day before the go into labor. That must be what happened to me on Thursday, because I vacuumed the house, actually took a shower, did my make-up, shaved my legs, painted my toe nails (how I reached them, I'm still not sure), and went to my EMT class where I walked around taking pictures of our MCI for several hours - that's all another story though. I was pretty proud of myself. I was especially happy that I managed to get my make-up done so I didn't end up doing it at the hospital like my sister did. :)I was admitted shortly after I got there, I was only dilated to a 3 and 40% effaced. They got me hooked up to the IV, which was done by a nursing student, who did very well. Last time I got a huge, painful clot in the vein from the IV needle. Not this time, she did awesome. However, the veteran nurse who drew blood the following day completely missed the vein in my arm so I had a dollar bill sized bruise to show for it. I think I'd rather have totally inexperienced students sticking me from now on, thank you very much.

I had to wait two hours to get my epidural. When the anesthesiologist came in, I actually asked to see what the needle looked like. Morbid, I know. He, very wisely, waited until after it was in to show me. For those of you who are unsure about getting one because it's a huge needle, it's unnecessarily hyped up. And this is me talking, me with the really strange fear of needles (which Sterling talks about here). The needle is no bigger around than a needle that they use when you donate blood. If you can do that, you can do this. No worries. And it's really not painful at all. I don't remember much about it with Cami's birth. I was too busy throwing up at that point. But this time was easy.

Moving on, so, we got to the hospital at 11:00 pm, with Cami it was at midnight. I got the epidural at 1:00 am, the same time that I got it with Cami. And my water broke at 4:00 am, nearly the same time that it broke with Cami. Is this getting a little weird and coincidental? I thought so too. However, that's where the similarities end. After that things went really, really fast. The doctor arrived at about 4:10. I started pushing at 4:16 and two contractions later we had a little boy at 4:20! Whew! So easy!He's very cute. I know every mother thinks that about their child, but really, he is! He doesn't even have a cone head since the delivery was so incredibly fast. Sterling got to deliver him (he would have delivered Cami as well, but she had the cord wrapped around her neck) and since he was holding the baby while they suctioned his nose and everything, I got to cut the cord. It was actually pretty cool. I kinda thought that it would be anti-climatic since everyone builds it up so much, but no, it was actually really neat.He's a very tiny little guy, almost a full pound smaller than Cami was. So far we think he looks like my dad, with his squinty little eyes. So cute! My mother-in-law says he has the Fenwick nose though. He's had a fair bit of jaundice, but it's going down slowly. We, fortunately, haven't had to put him on lights or anything. Already he sleeps about four to five hours at a time at night. I'm still sleep deprived, more so than I ever was with Cami, but it's getting better.The last two weeks have just flown by so quickly. He's already put on over a half pound in weight. It's amazing just how fast they grow. I'm trying my best to enjoy it while it lasts. I feel great. My recovery time with him was a lot faster than it was with Cami. I have tons of energy, despite my lack of sleep, and have been doing great. Cami seems to be adjusting about as normally as any other first child does. :) For those without kids: she's jealous and cries a lot more and whines and does whatever she can to get attention. It's to be expected though. She loves to look at him and pat his head and even gives him kisses. It's actually very sweet. I just count myself lucky that she hasn't tried to smother him with a pillow, yet.Over all, we're doing well. I'm just happy to have him here 10 days earlier than we expected. We had an inducement scheduled for Mon the 15th. The Ides of March. I'm happy he came on his own instead. Sterling hasn't been able to start with his master's project yet because of the snow out in Vernal, but I'm just fine with that because it means he's been around to help control the circus that is now our home. He seems excited to have a boy. Not that he won't take Cami fishing and hunting as well, but it's just nice to have a son. I'll try to be better about posting pictures and giving updates. I'm doing great til now if I get one a month. I'll make more of an effort, but with two kids now, it'll be tough.

Pregnancy woes....

I just have to say that the last three or so weeks of pregnancy are by far the worst. I know others would disagree and say that the morning sickness is the worst, but when you're prone to hormonal imbalances BEFORE you get pregnant, like I am, when it comes down to the last few weeks before you deliver, you are one of the moodiest people in the world and nobody wants to be around you at all. At least, that's how I feel. I've been very moody recently and yelling at Cami and Sterling all the time. I feel awful. It's just hormones. They suck. Sterling, I just hope you know how much I love you and I'm so glad you put up with me because I know I've been hard to live with lately.

So, that said, people have been asking for pregnancy pictures, so here's a few. This was taken about a week ago, so say 36 1/2 weeks pregnant. Cami wanted me to pick her up while I was trying to take this picture.


I feel like I'm very small still, but what do you think? Here's from my first pregnancy at about 28 weeks along.

Is it just me or do I look almost the same in these two pictures? Weird.

Truth is that this little guy actually has been measuring on the very small side. For those of you who don't know, they measure from your pubic bone to the fundus (the top) of your uterus once you hit about 30 weeks. You're suppose to be as many centimeters as you are weeks along, give or take two centimeters. Well, at my 36 week appointment, I was only measuring at 33 centimeters, so my doctor had me go in to get an ultrasound at the hospital.

They didn't give us any ultrasound pictures, which I'm a little sad about since our first set weren't very good. But they told us that we are definitely still having a boy. :) No question about that.... They did some measurements on him to make sure he was growing alright and said if it was a problem with the placenta - that it wasn't providing him nutrition like it should - then they would have to take him early. So that's what they were checking. They did several measurements: his head circumference, his abdomen circumference, his femur length, the amount of amniotic fluid in there, etc. Stuff like that. Averaged out, he was about 34 weeks and 6 days in size, whereas I was 36 weeks and 2 days along. So about a week and a half smaller than what they were expecting. They guessed that he weighs about 5 lbs 10 oz. right now. Which is great news for me! I'd love to have another small baby!

What I found funny though was that the measurement for his femur marked him at 33 weeks along, but his head circumference put him at 38 weeks along. Great. I'm going to have another gigantic headed baby.

Over all they weren't worried. What they found doesn't change my due date at all and he seems to be growing alright, just genetically small. Too bad, I was hoping for tall boys, but with my genes in the mix, changes are all our kids will be midgets.

I thought I'd post a picture here of my countdown. Two weeks baby!! It's been enormously satisfying to rip off a ring every evening and seeing it dwindle down so much that it almost can't hang on the fan anymore. Soon it won't be able to at all! That makes me so happy!


One other funny story about pregnancy. Any of you out there who have been pregnant before will sympathize with this. About a month ago or so, Sterling and I were out in the front yard doing a little bit of yard clean up since the weather was nice. I have the Achoo Syndrome, like most of my family does. We think it's a Scandinavian trait. Anyways, I turned and looked up into the sun and sneezed several times. After the third one I turned to Sterling "Crap, I just peed my pants." He started laughing really hard and asked how much. I told him it was enough that I needed to go change. And I took off for the house waddling with my legs spread apart. That just got him laughing harder. Aw, the joys of being pregnant.

Sadly, this was not an isolated event. It gets very difficult as you get farther on to control your bladder. It also doesn't help that you've got a little person inside you kicking at your bladder when they want to stretch. I told this story to one of my friends and she not swears she never wants to get pregnant. Honey, I'm sure there are people out there who could tell you worse stories than mine.

So, to wrap up, since I didn't really say anything about Cami in this post, let's end with some pictures of her.

Master's Project

This is Sterling giving you an update on our recent news. As most of you know, I recently applied for graduate school at BYU. Well, after a long and tedious process, I was just advised by Dr. Larsen that he would like to recommend me to work on his sage grouse project coming up in March.

(Dr. Larsen)

Now, he cannot accept people into the graduate program as that decision is left up to the graduate committee. However, with a professor willing to sponsor me, I am pretty much guaranteed acceptance. So, hopefully the committee will meet soon and will officially accept me as a master’s student at the university.

What’s that you say? What is a sage grouse, and who gives a flying leap about them? Well, this is a sage grouse, also known as a prairie chicken:

This is a male, and during mating, they puff up these air sacs in their chest and perform a rather elaborate mating dance trying to impress the ladies who watch from the sidelines. They live in large open areas of sagebrush, and during mating season they gather in a more or less bare patch in the sage brush called a lek, and males strut their stuff.

So, who gives a flying leap about these birds? Well, for many years, they have been sought after as a game species for hunters, and they are also enjoyed by many people for the mating rituals that I have described. Recently, however, these birds have seen a dramatic decrease in their population. Several studies were performed to see if they should be considered endangered or not. While the controversy of listing them is still up in the air and in the hands of the politicians, the studies have discovered perhaps the main cause for their decline. As I stated, these birds live in large, open areas of sage brush. Many of these large areas have been reduced to smaller sizes. Additionally, the open areas are being dotted with various types of tall structures. Raptors, such as hawks and falcons, perch on these structures and can easily pick off the grouse.

(Notice the two oil rigs behind the grouse)

Because of the habitat problems, birds have stopped using the limited number of leks (strutting grounds) and overall have just had a hard time surviving.

Now don’t get me wrong, I am not an environmentalist tree hugger. My license plate cover says “save a tree, shoot a tree hugger”. I don’t believe in the concept that we should preserve everything and that man is evil and destroying the planet. However, I don’t believe that we are entitled to exploit the world we live in with no regard for the consequences. I believe that we should be responsible stewards of this earth—using the resources we have, but ensuring that they will be well taken care of.

That being said, here is the purpose of my project. The state of Utah has five core populations of sage grouse that they consider to be vital to the survival of the species in the state. In an effort to find out what these populations need to survive, the state is willing to pay thousands of dollars (mostly from the sale of hunting and fishing licenses) to study each population. This way, we can ensure their survival, but also allow other entities to use the land around them without a major affect on future numbers. So far, the project has done wonders, and bird numbers are recovering quite well. However, the state has only conducted this study on 4/5 populations. Guess what, I will be studying the fifth.

Sponsored by BYU and funded by the Utah Division of Wildlife Resources, and under the direction of Dr. Larsen, I will go out to the diamond Mountains near Vernal Utah to study this last major population.

(More or less the area, Vernal is in the background)

I will trap,

measure and weigh,

and radio collar about 100 grouse.

I will then track them over the next several months to record their migration routes, leks, and other habitat being used.

Over the spring and summer, I will be in Vernal at a bunk house for four days and three nights, and then I will be back with Erika for the rest of the week. I will probably have a crew out there working with me also. Starting in September, I will be taking classes, compiling data, and traveling to Vernal about once a week to collect more data.

So this is what I will be doing for the next couple of years. Things are not for sure until the graduate committee makes their decision, and even then, the project might not be exactly as I described it. But as far as I know, this is what awaits me.

And may I add as a side note, this is the most messed up and non-user friendly program I have used since elementary school when computers were being developed. I can't believe Google would produce a program so bad for posting blogs.

The Holidays

Ok, so time for the holiday recap. For Thanksgiving we went to Colorado to my Grandma Peggy's house. My brother David came with us and my dad flew out from Hong Kong because one of his best friends unexpectedly passed away a few days before Thanksgiving. So we went to the funeral down in Price, then continued on our way to Colorado. It was a nice weekend. We relaxed and played games and ate a lot. A friend of my grandma's friend taught us all how to play Texas Hold'Em. It's kinda fun to know all the rules and to actually understand the game more or less. I realized after we got back that we didn't take any pictures! Pretty lame, I know.

For Christmas, we spent the holiday with Sterling's family. They have this awesome tradition where they do fondue every Christmas Eve. We get cheese and crackers and veggies, and marinade beef in yummy sauces and then cook it in the hot oil in the fondue pot. By far one of my favorite traditions. I'm dead set on getting our own fondue pot when we finally move out of Utah. Sterling's brother, Preston, his wife Alisha, and their little girl Beca were all there as well. It was a lot of fun. Once again I forgot to bring my camera.

The only pictures I did manage to get were a few of Cami opening presents at our house Christmas morning. This is the only one that wasn't too blurry. Like most little children, she enjoyed the wrapping paper far more than the actual presents.

For New Years, brace yourself for this, we went to bed at nine. Yeah, that's right, we're really boring. But really, Sterling had to work at 6 the next morning, and I'm just always tired since I'm pregnant, so we just decided to go to bed. Our neighbors woke us up at midnight though. They were out on the lawn yelling for a good twenty minutes. At least someone knows how to ring in the new year right, it's just not us.

So, as far as jobs go, I kinda left it hanging there. So, to go backwards, he didn't get the Fountain Green job, but did get offered the animal control officer position at Saratoga Springs. We took it, but once he started working there, we found out it wasn't what they'd told us it would be. He would have had to be on call every single weekend and he was required to work after hours (staying after for police meetings and such, even though he's not a police officer) and he wouldn't get paid overtime for it either. It just wasn't good. So, he quit that job and we looked into Marines again. That's what I meant when I said it's coming full circle. Sadly, that's not going to work out. They don't have any other pilot spots open until October and we certainly don't want to wait that long. So, he's recently taken the GRE (Graduate Record Examination) and is busy applying to BYU's Master's program. He's talked to a professor at BYU who will likely take him on (assuming he's accepted to BYU) and will be able to start in mid-March with any luck. He'll be studying sage grouse (a type of bird) out in Vernal. Then he'll eventually start classes in September and we'll go from there.

Right now, however, he's working as a supervisor of the housekeeping department up at Sundance. It's just a temporary thing until we hear from BYU, which should hopefully be the second week of February. For now though he's supervising a crew of ten hispanic women, few of whom speak English. His spanish language capabilities are really coming in handy right now. We're just happy that he has a job, however temporary it may be. The other day he was talking with one of the guys on his shift, Julio, and found out that he has a wife who works there as well who's name is Erika and they have an 18 mo. old daughter named Camille. Talk about coincidences....

As for me, BYU's new EMT certification class started up again. I was able to be a TA for it last year and get to do it again this year. It's always been fun for me to help teach this class. It's nice to have something to do to keep me busy, plus I get to earn a little money on the side.

Cami is finally going to nursey by herself! It's so nice to have to worry about her anymore. The only difficulty is that our church just moved to 11:00 which is when her nap time is, so by the end of nursey she's really tired and fussy. Last week she sat and cried for about ten minutes. Hopefully that won't become a habit though.

Because it's been awhile since I posted pictures, I'm just going to stick a whole bunch on here of Cami. I still haven't gotten any of me and my belly. Just keep forgetting, plus there's never anyone around to hold the camera for me since Sterling is working all the time. But here's some pictures.

This is at Cami's cousin Beca's birthday party. She had fun playing with the boxes.


This is Cami and Noah. His mom and I were due on the same day. Noah ended up being born 19 hours earlier than Cami. We joke that they're betrothed, but then I found out that Noah has been betrothed to several girls in his ward as well.



Cami playing in the leaves back in October. She didn't really seem to know what to think at first, but she had fun. While I was raking, Cami came over and started scooping the leaves up with her hands trying to help me. It was really cute.





Cami and Sterling just playing on the couch. This is what happens if you leave the two of them alone together too long.



One day I was really bored, so I decided to make a countdown for my pregnancy. It was probably one of the most depressing things ever because the chain just kept going on and on and on! Each of the colored ones represents a Sunday. We hung it on our bedroom ceiling fan like some bizarre chandelier. It's been very satisfying to tear a ring off each evening. As of now it no longer overlaps.

I have to say it's amazing how fast the second pregnancy goes. I can't believe I've only got 8 weeks left. I was talking to my sister about that the other day and she said she found the same thing. I guess it's partly because you're not obsessing over being pregnant like you do with your first. Also, you've already got one child to keep you occupied so you don't have much time to dwell on your growing belly.

Updating

Every time I get on the computer with the intention of updating my blog, I always spend way too much time checking everyone else's blogs and by the time I'm done with that it's either too late at night, or I'm just no longer in the mood to sit down and type an extensive post for my own blog. Today it's the latter. Maybe if I just started being better about updating more frequently, my updates wouldn't seem so arduous.

Ah well. Since I'm not in the mood for a long post, let me just write on here that, yes, we are still alive. I am still very pregnant and getting more so. We had a great Christmas and Thanksgiving, which, hopefully, I'll blog about before the year is over. I'm sure I've almost completely lost my readership since I never blog anymore. We still don't have a job and things are... well, coming full circle in that area. We'll just leave it at that for now. I'll explain when we know more. Cami is still adorably cute and has been climbing everywhere. Sterling is trying to teach me spanish. Trying being the operative word there. And that's really all that's happening at the Fenwick household. All in all, things are going well here. Thanks for asking. :)

One last random thought, have you ever noticed that in movies, almost nobody shuts the front door when they walk into the house. There will be five feet of snow outside and people just walk in without shutting the door. Ever. Also, did you notice that when people talk on the phone in movies, they never say 'goodbye', they just hang up. I notice both of those things a lot and, frankly, they annoy me. We watched "Julie and Julia" the other night and they did both of those things quite frequently. I think from now on I'll never tell people 'goodbye' on the phone. I'll just hang up randomly and leave them talking to themselves for a good five minutes before they realize that I'm no longer there. After all, that's how it's done in the movies, right?