Connor Speaks!

Well, not with words we adults recognize yet. But he's definitely communicating something!

Visit from the Terrys

While at Tate, we invited our friends Leslie, Kevin, and Ella Terry to visit us.  Kevin and Leslie started dating about 9 months before Patrick and me.  Kevin went to school with me and Leslie went to school with Patrick.  We've all been friends a long time.  Ella is seven months old, so Leslie and I were pregnant at the same time and have had a lot of fun sharing the experience together.  We've always joked that since Ella and Connor will be in the same grade, they will be boyfriend and girlfriend.  Ella is at a stage now were she is fascinated by other babies and she wanted to grab Connor the whole time she was near him.

Ella tried to learn the word "gentle"

Week at Tate

My great-grandfather, Joseph Winship, built a house at a golf course and lake in 1930.  Several other people also built houses around the lake and some time, it became a closed community of people and their families to enjoy the beautiful north Georgia mountains and simple living.  The golf course is far from functional (it gets mowed once a year) and the road is rough gravel.  It's about a close to heaven as you can get on earth and my family has been sharing the Winship house for over 80 years.  Since it's shared with so many cousins, we Carpenters get one week every summer, and last week was it.

We all arrived on Sunday at different times.  Patrick and I were latest because dinner that night was our responsibility and we had to go grocery shopping.  And Connor decided he needed to eat twice on the two hour trip.

 Everyone at the dock

 Great-aunt Graham stayed to visit with Connor and the nieces

 Lots of boys!

 Mermaid Lily Kate

The next day we all went to the dock together, but not before Patrick and I got pictures with our little man.

 View from the front porch

 

 This was Patrick almost every time we were at the dock.  He didn't want to get too far away from Connor!

Charlotte with the mermaid from Aunt Liz.

 Lily Kate and Lillian: cousins and best of friends

 Liz and Charlotte

 Pose!

 Laura and Myers love to hold Connor

 

 Daddy's on diaper duty

 Bad brothers: Will, Parks, and Myers

On Tuesday our friends Leslie and Kevin visited, but I will leave that for a separate post.  Tuesday night, Sarah and Henry came.  Henry stayed longer in Chattanooga to go see a Pink Floyd cover band at Riverbend, and Sarah had to work the whole week.  She gets Wednesdays off though, so she came up Tuesday night and left Thursday morning.  We love having Aunt Sassy there!

 Henry jumping off the tower

 Connor's first (and only) time swimming.  It was my only time in the water too.

 Safe and dry in Daddy's arms

 Sweet Uncle Will and Henry

 Action shot!

In the middle of the week, Lillian got sick with a temperature.  That meant Myers and Laura couldn't really do anything, or hold Connor, and I couldn't be with Lillian.  It was really hard on Myers and Laura, and me too!  She was feeling better by Saturday though.  Thursday was cold, so Patrick and I didn't even go to the dock to go swimming.  We had a good time reading and being with Connor at the house.

 The family of a sick child

 Lily Kate and Charlotte loving on sweet baby Connor.  They can't wait for their new sister!

On Friday, my mom, Sani, got a day off of work and came down to visit with her friend Sherry.  She loves being with all of her grandchildren, especially Connor, since he is still snuggly.

 An attempt at capturing Sani with three of her grandchildren.

 Since we are only together a couple times a year, we try to take pictures together.  I wanted the children to have cute outfits that coordinated, so I got them some at Old Navy.  Unfortunately, we didn't have much opportunity because Lillian was sick.  However, I did get some cute pictures of Lily Kate and Charlotte and their parents.  Not so much all of them together.

 Cool dude Connor

 Lillian felt good enough to visit the dock for a little bit

Saturday we all got up to leave, but since Lillian was feeling so much better, we took the chance to take some pictures.

 Connor's not sure about this...

 The only way we could get them all together was with their daddies.  This is the best one out of the bunch.  Not so bad, right?

Catching up: Weekend with Jenny

I try to post at least once a week but between going on vacation for 10 days and coming back home and getting settled, not to mention my extremely productive postpartum nesting, we haven't posted almost two weeks!

The first thing I need to talk about is how Connor's Aunt Jenny came to visit him.  The plan was for her to fly into Chattanooga on Thursday, June 9th, the same day Patrick and I were going to drive up to Signal Mountain to stay with my mom and visit both of our families before going to Tate for a week with my brothers and sisters.  Jenny missed her chance for a flight to Chattanooga, but was able to get on a plane for Huntsville, so Patrick picked her up on the way home from work and we all drove together to Chattanooga.  I think this turned out great because Jenny got to spend some real quality time with Connor by herself. 

After arriving on Signal Mountain and eating a late dinner of ribs, sausage, and chicken, courtesy of Hapaw, aka Ed Jemison, we went to my mom's and settling into our strange sleeping arrangement.  Patrick and I have a king-sized bed at home and Connor sleeps with us on it in a little co-sleeping contraption called the SnuggleNest. Google it.  At my mom's and at Tate, the beds are full-sized, so Connor and I slept on the bed and Patrick slept on a blow-up mattress on the floor, thanks to Aunt Sassy, aka Sarah.

Friday we spent the day at the Jemison house and the evening at the Carpenter house.  Saturday we had lunch with my grandmother, Granmar and visited my grandfather at his nursing home, then went to the Jemisons where we spent the rest of the afternoon and the Carpenters, including the newly arrived Myers, Laura, and Lillian, came over for shish kabob at the Jemisons.  Ed loves his grill and he is good at grilling!

We were so busy that weekend we forgot our camera every time we left my Mom's house!  Here are two pictures Jenny took with her phone:

Tummy Time!

Connor is a month old now, and so he begins tummy time! The goal here is to help Connor strengthen his neck muscles so that he can hold his head up on his own.

Here is a video of Connor making happy sounds. If this doesn't melt your heart, you probably don't have one. Just saying.

Connor still thinks tummy time is mostly about kicking his legs around. But when we did tummy time yesterday, I got him to turn his head twice! He tried a third time, but he was too tired.

Connor's eyes have really developed a lot also. He tracks people moving around the room very well, and, when I turned him side to side, his eyes stayed on me the whole time. You're doing great, Connor!

Friends

When I was in college, I had three best friends.  Even though we graduated 4 years ago, they are still my closest friends.  We keep in contact over an extremely long Facebook message that is thousands of  messages long.  When we found out that we were pregnant with Connor, they all said that they wanted to come and visit us.  I didn't think they were serious, until they started buying their tickets in January!  I was so glad they were coming!  We have been able to get together every year since we graduated for various reasons, but I'm so glad they came!

My sweet friends spent a lot of time helping me with cleaning the house and I scheduled Connor's baptism to be this weekend so that they could be here for it.  I thought we had taken more pictures, but apparently I was holding the baby the whole time and no one had my camera.  Maybe my friend Heidi took some more good ones.  Patrick tried to remind us to take pictures of each one of them with Connor, but we never did it.  Too distracted by catching up and going out to eat good food together.

We are very silly.