Connor Update 1: Current Routine

While a lot of the purpose behind this blog is to keep our family and friends up to date on our lives, it's also a very helpful place for me as a mom to keep track of what's going on with Connor (and in the future, Eamon) and his development.  I haven't posted a lot about what's going on with Connor lately and I wish I had.  Going back and reading posts from a year ago is totally eye opening as far as how incredibly fast children grow and learn.

Goofball.

Right now, Connor's typical sleep habits are to go to bed around 8 or 8:30, and wake up between 7 and 8.  Before we went to Tate, he was having a hard time going to sleep before 9 or even sometimes as late as 10:30, even though we tried to get him in bed at the same time every day.  Since Tate, he's been passing out at bedtime, which is such a relief for me.  Sitting there listening for Connor doesn't really make for a relaxing evening.  And he's so much happier in the morning, and naps go a lot better.  He's going down for naps around 1-2 and sleep anywhere from 1.5-3 hours, usually 2 hours.

Loving on his baby.

Connor eats breakfast kind of all morning.  I don't like having to put him in his chair in the morning, so he hangs out in the living room with me after nursing for a long time and helps me eat my cereal (with blueberries now that it's summer) and then has something like an oatmeal and banana cookie and grapes, or a banana and granola bar.  Some mornings he eats a lot, and some he barely eats anything.

All ready for church.

If we stay at home, he will ask to nurse a couple more times in the morning.  If we're staying at home, it usually means I'm really tired, so I let him nurse so I can doze off.  He will often watch videos of himself or one of the movies I have on my phone while nursing.  But a lot of the time I like to take him out, either grocery shopping, swimming at the YMCA, or going to a MOMS club meet up.  I used to have some of my friend over on Tuesday afternoons to hang out, but since Connor's nap is unpredictable and can go late, I changed our open house time to Thursday mornings from 9-12.

"Suggle wid cobers."

I try to get Connor to start lunch around 11:45, and he can take over an hour to eat.  Lately it's been much quicker and I hope it continues to get quicker. Connor eats better if he is alone, so I will get him food, and go to the living room to be on the computer for a while.  It's certainly something I don't mind!  Although, getting up and up and down off the couch multiple times to check on him and get him more food is getting a little tiresome this late in my pregnancy.  After lunch, we usually go straight to Connor's room where we play with puzzles, he plays with his other toys, and/or we read books until I think he's drowsy enough.  Then we put on his sleep sack and rock while he nurses for a few minutes before passing out.

Not completely sure if this is appropriate,
but it's so darn cute!

After Connor's nap, we play inside and outside, listen to music (our main activity in the house), or watch a little TV.  Occasionally, if he wakes up early enough and I have enough energy, we will go shopping for a little while.  Usually, I'm counting down the minutes until Patrick comes home so I can not be on call every minute.  Patrick is a hero and usually handles a lot of Connor's dinner time, bath time, (if he's having one.  Usually 2-3 times a week.) and getting Connor in his PJs for bed.  Then I sit and read to Connor while he nurses, we all pray together, I leave the room and Patrick lets Connor play, or read one more book and rocks him to sleep.

Love them.

These are nice days.  It's nice to have a routine, even if it gets messed up every once in a while or gets a little unpredictable when Connor wakes up early, or sleeps in.  The unfortunate part of Connor's current routine is that it is really difficult to get to church.  Despite the fact that our church has 5 services on the weekend, all of the morning ones are either while Connor's asleep or eating a meal (7, 8:30, 11:30) and the two evening ones are in the middle of dinner time.  We've been trying to go to the 8:30, which means waking Connor up a little early, and feeding him through the service, but sometimes I'm just too tired to go somewhere that early in the morning, like this morning.

So serious.

This post got really long so I will make another one with Connor's development soon!

Tate

Once again, my family was privileged enough to be able to spend a week up at our extended family's lake house in the Georgia mountains.

Myers and Laura came down to Chattanooga on Friday and then spent the night with our Aunt Graham, who had the house for the week before us on Saturday night.  Patrick and I went to Chattanooga Friday and then went up on Sunday morning, the same time (almost exactly!) as Parks and Liz.  We had a great meal provided by Graham and got to see her family with Sarah, Will, Mom, and Grandmar.  

As in the past several years, we were blessed with really great weather.  We only had a couple foggy mornings and a little bit of rain, but were able to go swimming every day.

How big are Connor and Arthur?  Arthur was too distracted
by all the people in the room.

Connor thought his big girls cousins were cool.

Second cousins Aly and Hadley were born on the same day!

Group shot.

An attempt to get Grandmar with all of her great-grandchildren.

An actual good portrait!

Haddie and Arthur

Arthur and Sassy

Brothers jumping off the tower on Monday.

For the most part, the children all stayed in the baby pool area.  Sometimes Lily Kate and Lillian would start swimming in the middle pool, and one time Lillian jumped off the diving board.  Connor spent almost his whole time right next to the sand, ignoring everyone, and Hadley ran around being fearless.  Arthur really enjoyed the time he got to spend in the water, even sampling some of the delicious sand.

Char and Uncle Will are special friends.

Connor surprised me so much by falling asleep during dinner one night!  He stayed asleep through getting cleaned up and going up to bed.  Sweet guy was worn out!

We tried to keep the technology low, but with so many people in the house, it was kind of necessary sometimes.  Myers set up Parks' iPad so that Lily Kate and Lillian could play Minecraft on the same server and they were so happy to play together.

Every year we try to get group shots of our sweet children and then of the families, if they want them.  We haven't taken a full family picture since 2009, the last time our whole family was together.  I don't know if anyone else wants one, but I kind of don't care about it yet.

My favorite of the Parks Carpenters.

Love this picture of us!

Getting ready to eat dinner.

One day, Connor told me to "come on" after he woke up from his nap.  So I followed him, and Patrick followed us with the camera.  We went down to the field in front of the house, then down the hill to the bridge.  We had a lot of fun taking lots of pictures and here are some of the best ones.

 Connor found a large stick and had a lot of fun moving it around and we loved taking pictures of it!

Brave Hadley!

We had such a great trip.  When we were headed down the mountain, Patrick said that we were also on the downhill toward having our sweet Eamon with us!  We're really focusing on all the things we would like to do before he gets here and we're certainly excited!

Eamon: The Wiggle Monster

Dada snuggles after nap time.

I'm working on a blog post about our wonderful family trip to Tate, but in the mean time, here is a video I got today of Eamon moving around.  I would classify this as a medium amount of movement from this little wiggle monster.  He likes to move A LOT.  But it tends to be rather quick and dirty.  Today he moved for me, then I got Patrick to come look at him and he moved around for Patrick too.  A happy Father's Day present!

Our fourth quarterly offspring projections

I'll start out with a baseball metaphor that Becca suggested to me. Sports are big in this family! ;-)

We've just passed third base, heading into the home stretch! Another way of saying it is that Eamon is 3/4 of the way to being fully baked and ready to come out of the oven. I typed that without realizing it's another metaphor. So sports, cooking, what else? How about construction? Eamon's foundation is laid, the framework is established, the utilities have been installed, and the roof is in place. All that's left now is to install the countertops, lighting, and flooring, and paint! Well, parts of that metaphor work. I'll have to work on it before I can coin it for my new book, "What Metaphors to use When You're Expecting."

But for real, Eamon's due date is just over two months away, Becca's well into the third trimester, and we are very excited! Also looking forward to our trip to Tate next week, which is our last big event before Eamon gets here. This is what Eamon looks like right now:

This is the best picture of Eamon I could get
with the photography equipment I had available.

So, here we are at 30 weeks, making Eamon about... this big!

How big is Johngarthia Cocoensis?  -- SO BIG!