Meet Connor Michael Ryan

Well, this post is a little overdue. I mean, Connor turned 11 months old today. I swear we haven’t been keeping him locked up in a basement all this time. We don’t even have a basement. Closets, sure, but no basement.

Last December, Claire, Ada and I welcomed Connor into our lives with open arms. For Claire and I, we were ready. We knew roughly when he was coming, though he ended up choosing his own time and arriving alarmingly quickly. But that’s a story for another post. Ada, however, was a trooper. No matter how often we tried to explain in the months and weeks leading up to Connor’s arrival, she didn’t appear to be getting it.

But when our friend and neighbour brought her in to the hospital for that first visit, it was clear to everyone that it was love at first sight for the new big sister. She couldn’t take her eyes off the tiny baby in the cot and was beaming from ear to ear the whole time. Since then, she’s rarely been anything but an amazing friend and sibling, sharing toys, determined to play with Connor and truly enjoying being around him. She’s never shown an ounce of jealousy toward him, and is massively protective and proud of him.

Connor fit right into our family and it wasn’t long before we were having a hard time remembering life without him. Like his sister, he is a relentlessly happy baby, with smiles for everyone who so much as glances at him on the bus. He is bubbly and chatty and loves to chase after Ada. In fact, the first sounds that he made that sounded like anything at all was Ada’s name. “Ah-dah, Ah-dah, Ah-dah” over and over, much to Ada’s utter joy. He doesn’t yet actually associate that sound with Ada, more just parroting an oft heard set of sounds, but it’s still adorable.

He’s definitely his own man, though. Where Ada happily slept in until well past 8am most mornings (and still does), Connor is up at 7am sharp. Where Ada didn’t crawl until 9 months, Connor took off after the dogs the morning we landed at home, a day before he turned 8 months old, and I have no doubt that he’ll be walking, and running, much faster than Ada too. God help us all.

But he was always a little ahead of the physical abilities curve, it seemed. On the day he was born, he arched back his head, looked the nurse that was holding him square in the eye, then threw his giant head, and a fair portion of his body with it, to one side. The nurse was supremely unimpressed with his valiant attempt to leap to the ground at a few hours old.

Everyone that meets Connor comments on how social he is. He likes to stare at people until they notice him, then play shy for a bit, then smile at them before repeating this game with someone else. He craves attention, yet also loves to be on his own.  He always enjoyed tummy time as a baby, and now that he’s older, he’ll happily crawl off into Ada’s room and go play with some toys for a while without me.

Claire and I are so lucky to have Ada and Connor in our lives. Being a parent is not always easy, but with these two, it’s always rewarding.