First day of Day Care

Avalon went to her first day of child care on Oct. 22 when Camille returned to work (pictured above). She has been going there now for 4 weeks and seems to enjoy it. She is entertained by our friend's son Eddie who is now about 15 months old. Cami, her caretaker, said she is eating well now (up to 6 oz at one feeding) and loves to take naps in the swing.

Introduction to Hovnet

Many of our friends have blogs these days, especially those with children and are away from their families. Tracy and Erik Hovland visited us a week ago and they now have a post on their blog about the visit. Tracy went to high school with Camille and was her personal attendant at our wedding. Erik is from Duluth, but I only met him once Camille and I started dating. They now live in Newport News, VA which is only a couple hours drive from Durham. And, they have a bun in the oven! So, we gave them lots of advice, probably more than they bargained for. Hopefully some of it was good.

Family vacation

Avalon took her first family vacation the week of Oct 12-19. We visited Lake Lure, NC with Jarad's parents. Lake Lure is a man made lake in the mountains of North Carolina near Asheville. We went on several hikes in the mountains and saw some beautiful waterfalls (pictured above). During our hikes, Avalon enjoyed looking at the trees and napping!

A family pic

We found a new park near our apartment named West Point on the Eno. This park has a working water-powered mill and you can even buy the flour and grits that it produces. This family picture, which I believe is the first on the blog, is taken in front of the dam-created pond. The steering wheel looking thing on our right diverts the water to the mill.

A milestone: rolling over

In a previous post, we had a video of Avalon rolling over from front to back. I have still yet to see her actually do this although I have been present when it happened. That is, I placed her on her stomach, turned my back for a second, and then turned back around and she was on her back, but I didn't actually see her accomplish this feat.

Just this weekend, she started rolling over from back to front, as shown in the video. The first time it probably took her 30 minutes to go from back to side to stomach with arm caught and finally head up with both arms underneath her. The video shows her accomplishing this feat (okay, her arm is still kinda pinned) in much more rapid fashion. Now when we put her on the ground, she instinctively straightens her legs and then jackknife's them to be 90 degrees relative to her body. Then gravity takes over and her body rotates to one side. At this point, always to her right.

The even more amazing thing is that the last couple of times she rolled from back to front, she then immediately rolled from front to back. So now I have actually seen her accomplish this feat.

Halloween

Avalon's first Halloween was this past weekend. On Friday night, we stayed home and had a bunch of candy for trick-or-treaters. We even made sure to keep our outside light on as indication we welcomed kids in costumes. Since we only had one trick-or-treater, we will be eating candy for a while. Unfortunate for those of us with no self control.

On Saturday night the Duke stats department had its annual Halloween bash. If you cannot make out our costumes in the picture, we were bank robbers and Avalon was our money bag loot. Certainly Avalon got plenty of attention at the party, being the youngest person there by about 20 years. She stayed awake for the first half an hour and then passed out for an hour and a half in the middle of the dance floor which was absolutely packed...props to Dan.

Being parents of a 3 month old

Sorry to all my blog followers who have been patiently waiting almost a month for an update. I'm sure all two of you were wondering what had happened. We took a vacation with my parents out to Lake Lure, NC and since then I have been busy trying to figure out where my career is going. But enough about me, this blog is about Avalon.

I figured the picture above was a pretty realistic depiction of what it is like to be the parent of a 3-month old. When this occurred I quickly ran and told Camille to come have a look.

Camille: she just ate why did you put her on her stomach.
Me: I didn't!

Yes, that's right, she rolled from her back to her stomach. Promptly spit up all over the place and rubbed her face in it. And she couldn't have been happier!