Show-and-Tell, Round 66: Special Agent Oso

My friend, Mark, once again brought the girls a gift that was an immediate hit. Of course, Ivie demanded to bring him to Show-and-Tell. It's Special Agent Oso! How cool is that?!?

If I would have been a bit quicker with the camera, I could have gotten a picture of Ivie holding Oso while watching him on television before leaving for school that morning. But I only got the Disney logo. Bummer.

Thanks, Mark. The girls love him!

A Slice of Bryce (#7): My Heart? It's Good. Real Good.

Hi, everyone. It's me again. Just wanted to report in and tell you that I went to the doctor this morning for my heart. And Dr. F said that while I do have a murmur, it's only the beautiful sound of my healthy heart, pumping away, just like it's supposed to. As much as Mommy tried to get it out of him, he couldn't really explain why it sounds the way it does, except to say that it's very common and doesn't mean anything at all. They did an EKG, just to be safe (being the good boy that I am, I slept through almost all of it) and the results were perfect. No holes in this heart! Dr. F says he believes I have the inner workings of a future star athlete (I might be paraphrasing there just a bit, but I think Daddy would agree that this is definitely what the doctor meant.)

Say, Dr. F? Mommy and Daddy wanted me to tell you thanks, from the very bottom of THEIR hearts, for telling them that mine is okay. Ditto from me, too. And while you seem like a really nice guy and all, I hope I never see you again. Please don't take it personally.

Macie's Turn (#12): Ladybug Flying Disk

I love social shopping websites. This is not a surprise to anyone who knows me, particularly my husband, who just shakes his head when the packages arrive on the front porch.

But I'm pretty sure that even he would admit that I've gotten some GREAT deals over the past year or so since I discovered these sites.

I think I found this Ladybug Flying Disk on Totsy.com. Not 100% sure (since there are about 15 of them that I check fairly regularly), but I do know that I got it at the same time that I got a booster seat for Bryce. You know, for when he's old enough to sit at the table with us. Gotta plan ahead, right?!? Especially when you get a great deal. That's my motto these days...

But back to the Show-and-Tell item of the moment. This is great for teaching the girls to throw a Frisbee. Ivie's got the motion down. Macie? Not so much. But it's funny watching her try!

Show-and-Tell, Round 65: ZhuZhu Pet Hamsters

When we were potty-training Macie several weeks ago, we started sticker charts as our reward system. The only problem with this was that having a sticker chart for Macie was NOT okay with Ivie. So we had to start a "Sweet Girl" chart for her, as well.

Turns out the girls filled up their charts at about the same time, so we were off to Target to get their prizes. And, as luck would have it, these ZhuZhu Pet Hamsters were on clearance, so Macie chose 3 of them as her prize (to go along with the two that the girls had received from a friend as big-sister gifts when Bryce was born).

So, earlier this month, all 5 of the hamsters went to school with Ivie for Show-and-Tell. When I got to school to pick her up at the end of the day, all of the kids were crowded around the hamsters watching them crawl all over the floor in the room. I think they were a hit!

Ivie's Preschool Graduation (6.3.2011)

On Friday, June 3rd, Ivie's class held its preschool graduation ceremony. Dale, a sleeping (thankfully!) Bryce, and I were able to attend and man both the camera (me) and the Flip (Dale).

I'm going to warn you from the outset that what is going to follow here are a LOT of short video clips, cropped down song-by-song. Which means, I think, that there will be about 20 clips. Which ALSO means that I'm fully aware that the Herman household will likely be the only one out there that will watch all of these. But, hey, at least you have several to choose from, right?!?

I will say that if you choose to only watch one of the videos, I would suggest picking The Lord's Prayer. We're so proud of Ivie. Miss Brenda asked us if we could help teach her the Lord's Prayer about 2 weeks before graduation. Not thinking that a 5 year-old could learn such a long prayer, we hadn't started Ivie on it prior to this request, so we were a bit worried. But she worked very hard to learn it, practicing several times a day and, as you will see, she nailed it! And now she recites it to anyone who will listen...

Other cute Ivie-specific clips to watch (again, if you don't want to watch all approximately 30 minutes worth!) are the ones entitled "When I Grow Up", "Ivie's Award", and "Diploma".

Anyway, I'll go ahead and put the pictures first on this post, followed by the video clips. It was so cute watching Ivie's class perform. They had such a fun time on stage, and it was pretty impressive watching them sing the 15 songs that they'd memorized!

Have fun in Kindergarten, kiddos! It's been so great getting to know each of you...

The Procession

The Lord's Prayer

The Pledge of Allegiance

This Land is Our Land

Brenda's Poem

Oh, We're Ready




His Banner Over Me




ABC Jesus




I Am a Promise




When I Grow Up...




Ivie, Extremely Worried About Violet's Cap




I've Been Having Fun in Preschool




On Top of Spaghetti




Kids Under Construction




Tiny Drops of Water




Ivie's Award




Diploma




Jesus is My Friend Today




I Believe I Can Fly




I'm a Little Graduate




You Are My Family




Pastor Martie's Closing

A Slice of Bryce (#6): Through the Night

Just popping in for a quick update for you all, since my last Slice of Bryce mentioned this topic...

On Friday night, the eve of Bryce's 9-week birthday, he decided to celebrate. By sleeping!

I fed him at 7:30p, and he was asleep by 8:15p (after we battled with presumably a gas bubble for a while). And he didn't wake up until 5:45a!!! By formal calculations (going with the time the last feeding began), that means he made it 10 hours and 15 minutes and, for the first time by MOMMY'S requirements, slept "through the night". Although 5:45a is a bit early to make my cut, by the time he finished eating and we walked out of his room, I heard the girls giggling through their door.

And if the girls are awake, we can consider our night over.

Congrats, B! This is one for the baby book. Wait. You don't have a baby book. Probably because I bought one for your sister (Macie) and never opened it. So I decided to save the money with you and put it toward the printing of the yearly blog book instead. Because printing 3 copies of that thing is going to be expensive!

A Slice of Bryce (#5): Two Months!!!

Hey there. Bryce here. Mommy is in the other room folding burp cloths (she sure seems to be doing a whole lot of that these days), and she just dropped her iPad on my lap and told me to "earn my keep" by typing up a two-month update for you all. I took offense to her wording, obviously, but I don't want her to cut off the milk every 3 hours, so I'll do as I'm told. Which, by the way, is not something I've learned from my sisters, particularly in the past few weeks. Mommy was even forced to start a "marble jar" system, which is supposedly going to help with the girls' first response to a request by Mommy and Daddy being "NO". The jury is still out on whether or not it's going to work. But I like looking at the colorful marble jars nonetheless.

Anyway, this post is supposed to be about me, not the girls, so let's get to it. In list format, since I'm already starting to learn organization from Mommy (and I know she's going to proofread this with her proverbial red pen and change it to how she wants it to look anyway).

1) I am smiling a lot these days. I like to call it my "get-whatever-I-want-someday grin", but Mommy says the internet calls it the "social smile", so I'll use that here so it sounds like I know what I'm talking about. For those of you with a Facebook account (which I'm happy to say now includes Nina and Papa, since Mommy set up an account for them when we were in Missouri), you've already gotten a sneak peak. For the rest of you, I think Mommy has plans to try to get me to smile for the camera in my "2 months" shirt later to include with this post. I haven't decided yet if I'm going to cooperate. Guess you'll find out soon enough...

2) Hold on a minute. I have to take a break from writing this to get Mommy to give me some medicine for my hiccups. I sure seem to get them a lot. Thank goodness Mommy has discovered Little Tummys Gripe Water. I don't really understand how that stuff works, but it sure does! Although, as I searched for a link to share with you, I read a review and it said that this stuff has parabens in it. I have no idea what that is, but I guess I better tell Mommy in case it's something I'm not supposed to have. Hmmmm, on second thought, I think we'll keep it our little secret. Whatever parabens are, I can deal with them. Those hiccups? Can't deal. They make me shake from my big head to my little toes!

3) Speaking of me and measurements, I had my two-month check-up on Monday morning. Here are my stats:

Weight: 14 pounds, 9 ounces (97th percentile)
Height: 23 inches, or 1 foot, 11 inches, as Dr. J put on my form for school. They were out of daycare forms, so he had to use a sports form. And 1' 11" just looked better on a sports form, he thought... (50th percentile)
Head Circumference: 40 1/2 centimeters (75th percentile)

More about my doctor's appointment in a minute.

4) I'm starting to love to sleep at night! And if I could get rid of this cold-slash-start-of-ear-infection, I might love it even more. My record so far is 9 hours between feedings, which was just last night! I've also had an 8-hour-and-40-minute night, and an 8-hour night, just to prove that it wasn't a fluke. If Mommy didn't put me to bed at 7:15p, I could say I've slept through the night at only 8 weeks of age. But when you go to bed that early, 9 hours and only gets you to 4:15a. Which Mommy says doesn't count. She's tough. But she refuses to keep me up past 7:30p or 8p. Something about 8p - 10p being "her time". I wonder who's going to break it to her that there is no such thing as "her time" with 3 kids in tow? She'll figure it out on her own, I guess. No sense ruining her vision only 2 short months into her life as a mommy of three.

5) Mommy thinks it's pretty cool that she can walk around me now, in circles, and I do my best to follow her voice with my eyes. Who knew that a simply turn of my head could make a grown woman so happy?!? I know I just said in #4 that she's tough. But when it comes to stuff like this, she's a pushover.

6) Guess I better mention something about my naps, since I'm only a couple of weeks away from starting school (just part-time to get me and Mommy used to it). Miss Linda is NOT going to be happy that I don't like to nap in my crib. Mommy says that we need to practice that a lot over the next couple of weeks. So I've decided to show her my disdain by only sleeping for 30 minutes, fitfully, and then screaming my everlovin' head off until she rescues me. Only to fall asleep on her shoulder from exhaustion when she picks me up. As a result, I've noticed that she doesn't seem to mind when "errands" get us out of the house around nap time, which means I get to sleep in my favorite spot. My car seat. I can sleep there for hours. So comfy.

7) Alright. I'm running out of things to say, so I guess that means it's time to share with you the little bit of troubling news from my two-month doctor's appointment. Dr. J spent a lot of time listening to my heart with his stethoscope. And it was cold, so I was a bit squirmy, making it even tougher for Dr. J to get a good listen. When I finally calmed down enough, he told Mommy that he heard a murmur in my heart. And then he started using acronyms that I didn't understand (and, truth told, I don't think Mommy did either, though I did catch her Googling them when we got home). They were PFO and VSD. Dr. J told Mommy that she shouldn't worry about it (Yeah right. Does he know my mommy?), but that it was probably a good idea to go to a cardiologist and get an EKG to rule out VSD.

Like I said, I don't know what any of this means. But I don't want any of you to worry, because I feel just great. I certainly don't show any signs of this murmur causing me any problems ("failure to thrive" and "lack of appetite" are certainly not in my vocabulary), so I'm sure the cardiologist is going to tell me I'm fine.

But if you want to feel like you're helping, Mommy said I should tell you that you can pray for me. And for her and Daddy, because they're a little anxious about the test. My appointment is next Wednesday morning. I'll let you know how it goes.

Okay, I think that's it for now. All this typing has made me tired. I think I'll just put this iPad down and take a little nap...

My 2 Month Pictures
(and my accompanying thoughts about the process)

I told you earlier that I wasn't sure if I wanted to smile for Mommy. I decided to go ahead and give in. You know, back to the not-wanting-to-be-cut-off-from-the-milk issue. I'm afraid she's going to have me on that point for several more months...

But I wasn't going to give in easily. I started with smiling, but refusing to look at the camera. See?

Then, I moved on to making my smile disappear so quickly that, by the time Mommy got her eye back behind the camera, only half of it remained.


I got tired of smiling, so I thought I would just play with Mommy a bit and make silly faces. Like these:




So Mommy thought it might help to actually put her prop, this ball, on my lap. Like THAT'S going to make me smile! Good try...


This was getting really old. Seriously, Mommy, you're embarrassing me with the faces you're making at me.


Probably best for me to just go ahead and cooperate. But hurry to take the picture, because I'm about to fall over and I need you to catch me...


Okay, I'm balanced and happy now. Here it is, my parting smile. For now, at least, since I have a sneaking suspicion that this won't be the last time we have to go through this rigamarole.

Is June 22nd Too Late For An Easter Post?!?

I sure hope not. And if you think it is? T-O-U-G-H.

I can't believe it's taken me this long to do this post. I've had the pictures edited and ready for quite a while, but, well, life has taken over and I've gotten behind on blogging...

Thankfully, some day when the kiddos are looking back at their blog books, seeing this in the June pages won't make that much of a difference. Hey, at least I got the pictures in here eventually, right?

We got home from the hospital with Bryce just in time to join the Devers (and Stuart and Will Cherry this year!) for our annual Easter Egg Hunt. Danny, Dale, and my dad worked together to get the eggs hidden, while the ladies kept the kids occupied in the house. Then we were off. And the pictures, as always, tell the story better than I could in words, so I'll hand it off to them (in other words, it's late, and I don't feel like typing tonight).










Stuart's probably going to kill me for this, but I just thought this shot was hilarious...