Our Holiday Vacation to Chattanooga

This year for the Connell Family Christmas vacation we all went to Chattanooga for a couple of nights. We went to Ruby Falls and Rock City on the first day and then stayed in a hotel downtown and went to the aquarium and walked around downtown the second day. Claire was such a great traveler and slept so well in her portable bed and behaved so well at all of the attractions. She really loved seeing all the new stuff. Here are some pics of her and the rest of the group during her first aquarium trip.

Claire's First Christmas

Claire must have been a very good girl these past four months because Santa really brought a lot of gifts this morning. She enjoyed watching us open all the presents and posed for a bunch of pictures under the tree. We hope you all have had a very Merry Christmas! We loved our first Christmas with Claire and feel very blessed.

Our First Boo-Boo!!

Last week Claire got her first boo-boo playing with a three year old little boy at the babysitters house. I thought I'd share it with you all. It's a scratch on her nose that really didn't look that bad the first day. It took a couple of days for it to scab up.

Christmas Growing Up

As we get excited about our first Christmas with Claire, we have been looking back at pictures of ourselves as babies and young kids on Christmas morning. We decided to share some of the pictures of us growing up. Feel free to share who you think Claire looks more like--we can't tell yet!

Lisa's first Christmas

Lisa opening presents

Lisa surrounded by Legos, (I still have all of them!)

Todd(in the red) and Tim on Christmas morning

Todd getting an engineering toy already!

Tim holding Todd

She's already three months old!!

It's so hard to believe that Claire is already three months old. She is growing so fast! The last three months have flown by. She is babbling so much and loves sucking on her hands. She will spit out her passifier to get to suck on her hands. She is still sleeping through the night great and has only had one night in the last few weeks where she woke up in the middle of the night and wanted to eat and stay awake. She is averaging 8-9 hours a night, and Todd and I are loving it. Here are some pics from the last week.

Enjoying Thanksgiving

All dressed up to cheer Bama on to beat Auburn

Visiting with our friends Brian and Emily and their new baby girl Leah. She is only 12 days younger than Claire.

First Thanksgiving

We had my family Thanksgiving meal early this year, yesterday afternoon. We usually do it the Saturday after Thanksgiving but this year it conflicted with the all important Alabama-Auburn game. It turned out very well and Claire definately was the center of attention. She loved every minute of it! My cousin Pam has a great camera and took some of the best pics of Claire and here are some of the highlights.

Claire is sleeping through the night!!

Claire has been staying busy lately, and best of all has started sleeping through the night. Over the last couple of weeks she has been sleeping a little longer each night, and last night she slept a whole 7 and 1/2 hours!! It's so exciting! Of course I still wake up wondering if she is still breathing because I haven't heard a peep out of her (I still get up to check on her at least once during the night.)

Here are some picture of Claire's latest activities:

All dressed up on Saturday for a big Alabama game. She has definately been able to sport all of her many Bama outfits this year.

Playing in the floor during tummy time. She is definately getting stronger holding that head up everyday.

Playing with her friend Charlie over at Nick and Hilarie's house during a Dessert and Devo night after church on Sunday night.

Claire playing in the floor. She is getting more and more active during her playtime and you can tell she wants to be more mobile. She seems to get frustrated being unable to move.

We survived our first shots!

Yesterday, Todd and I took Claire for her two month check up. She weighed exactly ten pounds and checked out very good. It was also Claire's first shots at the pediatricians office. She had five shots in the leg and one oral vaccine yesterday. I think I cried just as much as she did (maybe more). It upset me so much more than I thought it would to have to hold her down to get that many shots. She was fine and calmed down after only a couple of minutes. Here are some pictures of her in the last couple of days.

Busy Weekend

Our family had a very busy weekend. Claire and I went to Anniston on Friday morning for a Grandma shower at my Mom's work. They threw her a wonderful shower and gave her great gifts to make a stay at Grandma's house more fun. She now has a pack and play, bath supplies, diapers, wipes, toys, clothes, burp cloths and books to keep at her house. We spent the night at Grandma and Grandpa's house in Anniston while Todd went camping at Oak Mountain State Park with some friends from church.

On Saturday my Aunt Ann and friend Ann Marie threw me a shower for family and friends that turned out really nice. Claire got some really cute toys, books, diapers, very cute personalized burp cloths (thanks Pam!), and a Bumbo chair. (I loved the little pacifiers made out of life savers and jelly beans shown in the picture of the cake below.)

She is getting more fun everyday. She loves smiling and playing. Claire finally gave me five hours of sleep in a row for the first time when we got back home on Saturday night! On Sunday night after church we had our annual trunk or treat and Claire dressed up as a bear. (We call her "Claire Bear" all the time and we thought it would be fitting for her to dress up as one for halloween.)

Claire was all smiles this afternoon

This afternoon Claire was all smiles, so I decided to get out the camera. Catching those smiles on camera proved to be very hard. I think I had to take 20 pictures to get a few smiles caught on the camera once I finally got the camera ready. We have really enjoyed her starting to coo and talk to her toys and respond to us with noises when we talk to her. She really smiles a lot now, and she especially loves to smile at her Daddy when he talks to her.