Welcome to the Bowkerhouse: May 2009

Sunday, May 31, 2009

We Have Rolling Over!

(...4 months early)

Today we got home from a walk downtown and Ava seemed a little fussy. So we thought she might want to lay on her tummy for a bit (something we've started introducing her to this last week).

For a while she sat there holding her head up and wobbling a bit, looking around, and then she put her head on the blanket and started kicking her feet. For a bit she looked like she was trying to work out the mechanics of crawling - she even moved herself forward a few inches - but then she started to rock her whole body back and forth. And within about 30 seconds she rolled herself over onto her back!

Kristi and I were a little shocked and decided to consult our Baby 411 book. It says that rolling over from stomach to back is usually a 2 to 4 month milestone for babies that are usually on their stomachs, and a 4 to 6 month milestone for babies that are usually on their backs. Ava is usually on her back, and today she's 3 weeks and 1 day old. So that puts her about 4 months ahead of the curve!

It's a little frightening; We don't want her to be mobile yet!

For that matter, it turned out she's not supposed to be holding her head and chest up while laying on her tummy until about 2 months - and she's been doing that for a week already.

I'm going to post some new pictures in our pictures section tonight, and I'll also post again if she starts suddenly walking or programming in Java Script.

Saturday, May 16, 2009

Pronunciation Clarifications

Today marks the one week anniversary of Ava Ray coming into our lives. (It's not really a birthday so we're calling it her weekday.) It has come to my attention that some clarification needs to be made on a few items.

But before I get to those, let me first express how grateful I am to everyone who helped make Ava's birthday so special; All the people who sent us kind emails, posted kind blog comments, left kind voicemail messages, and kindly visited us while we were still in the hospital: Thank You!

We have also been blessed with so many wonderful gifts and flowers and meals and blankets and clothes... It's just been truly amazing to be so blessed by our friends and family! And all that ON TOP OF being so incredibly blessed by God with a healthy, wonderful, beautiful baby. (She is the cutest baby ever, isn't she?)

Please accept our apologies for not returning all the calls and emails yet - we're finding that time has been slipping away with out a trace while we've been getting to know out little girl!

And that brings me to a few clarifications about name pronunciations that I want to make really quickly here.

I realized that I sent out some emails announcing Ava Ray Bowker to the world but didn't give any clues about how to pronounce her name. I just don't know where my brain was. So here's a handy guide:

If you are a Gaelic speaker from Ireland, Ava is pronounced Aoife.

If you live in Bellingham, Wa, Ava is pronounced the same as the well known and celebrated Ava Ray Bowker Day, as seen below:

Also, particularly perceptive Internet adventurers may have noticed the true spelling and pronunciation of Kristi's name as seen here on this very official and legally binding hospital web page here.

So hopefully that clears up any confusion there may have been about that.

In other news, Ava is doing very well. She has been able to move her head around at will since birth. She's also very proficient at sleeping, pooping, peeing, sucking on fingers, arching her back when we try to put her in her car seat, and just generally looking as cute as a button. But before you get too excited about how advanced she is you should know that our baby book tells us that because she's nearly 10 pounds she's also already roughly two months old. Not bad for her first weekday, huh?