Herring Family Happenings: August 2011

Saturday, August 27, 2011

Colors!

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Friday, August 26, 2011

Florida videos

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**Remember that if you are reading this from an email I've sent you, you'll have to visit the website to watch these videos.**

No children were harmed in the making of this video.

Piper talks about Daddy all day long!

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Thursday, August 25, 2011

Piper goes to Florida!

Last Thursday, Piper and I flew to Florida to spend some time with Grandad (my mom's father). We had a wonderful visit! It was so nice to see Grandad and some of my other Florida family that I hadn't seen in a long time. Plus, Piper got to meet lots of family members she hadn't met yet! I tried to do my best to document our entire trip, and for that reason there are a TON of pictures in this post. I hope you enjoy seeing our adventures!

Piper loves planes (we see and hear them all the time as they fly over our house), and she was super excited when she saw one up close.

The flight down was a little rough both because of turbulence and Piper's turbulent behavior. Luckily we had an entire row to ourselves for her to be a little wild and crazy. She really likes this flap book, and it kept her entertained for about .20 seconds on the flight.

Our first stop in Titusville was to introduce Piper to her great-great aunt Mary Jean and uncle Rodney. They are the sweetest people, and we had so much fun catching up with them.

Next stop was the best seafood restaurant in town, Dixie Crossroads. Piper was NOT a fan of meeting Mr. Rock.

She did, however, love to look at the fish and turtles swimming in the ponds outside the restaurant. Fishes, or shishes as she calls them, are one of her favorite things at the moment.

More fish-gazing

I was reluctant to share any of my rock shrimp....

....but Piper like them so much that I didn't mind!

After lunch, cousin Lauralee (one of the owners) let us feed the fish. I have a good video of this that I'll post later.

We also got to feed some pigeons.

Every year for Christmas, I make a family calendar for Grandad. He has four years of these, and Piper spent HOURS of our visit looking through them. She especially liked finding pictures of her daddy, uncle Bob, and fish.

No one is quite sure why, but Piper was taken with her great-uncle Bob. She pestered him while he was trying to take a nap, and we all let her pick at him to get back for all the years he has picked on everyone else :-).

Bob and Julie brought a huge lunch for us to eat and a basket full of toys for Piper to play with while she was visiting.

Piper loves her great-aunt Julie!

Cousin Anthony saved his birthday cake so we could share with him. Ice cream is a very rare treat for Piper!

I think she liked it!

On Sunday we went to church! Piper got to meet many of Grandad's friends there. And she was perfect in the nursery!

After church we changed clothes and headed back to Dixie. Piper still wasn't sure of Mrs. Rock.

I love this sweet picture!

Once her belly was full, she would at least pose for a second with Mr. Rock, as long as Grandad wasn't too far away.

Grandad was into watching the Little League World Series, so Piper would sometimes sit with him in the evenings to watch "bay-ball". She even pitched a temper tantrum or two when we wouldn't turn on "bay-ball" for her!

I'm not sure how this picture got out of order. Anyway, the outside of Dixie is decorated with scenes from Florida's natural wildlife. Piper loved seeing the shishes, alligators, and birds that filled the murals.

We were so busy visiting (and eating) that we didn't even get to the beach until Monday. We were able to meet my friend Kelly there with her little boy Liam. Piper loved playing in the sand and the water! She also liked it when I took her out into the deeper water and we floated over the waves together.

We practically had the entire beach to ourselves, so we could allow the kids to wander about as they pleased.

On the way home from the beach, we stopped at the wildlife preserve visitor's center so Piper could see their big alligator and turtles. She wasn't about to touch the alligator on her own!

But she would do anything with Grandad!

Before we left Titusville, I had to take Piper to Koiblers to eat. I have so many special memories of eating there with my mom, grandmother, and great-grandmother that I so wish Piper could be apart of. But I know they were with us in spirit!

This is the only picture of me from the entire week!

I'm not sure what brought this on, but her face is too cute not to share.

Piper made several new stuffed animal friends, including these two alligators.

We were so sad to leave! Our plane trip home was much more enjoyable, however, than the one to Florida. Perhaps this was because Piper got some energy out before the two-hour flight!

Piper got to enjoy some rare screen time with Mickey Mouse and friends on the plane trip home.

We were so fortunate to be able to take a week and visit in Florida. I made many memories with Piper and Grandad that I know I will cherish!

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Tuesday, August 23, 2011

My little beach bum

Sunday, August 21, 2011

Where in the world is Piper?

Thursday, August 18, 2011

Hilarious!

Click to watch!

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Tuesday, August 16, 2011

What's in a name?

Josh and I have officially decided on a name for baby Herring #2...

Graham Webb Herring

Josh chose Graham. Like Piper's first name, we wanted something different but not weird. His middle name is obvious--my maiden name. When we got married, Josh wanted me to completely drop my maiden name from my legal name. I agreed under the condition that we would name our first male child Webb.

There you have it!

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Video and Pictures that go with the 18 month post

Click to play!

Coloring

This cup is her favorite!

Josh bought me an iPad. Unfortunately for me, Piper thinks it's HER new toy.

"Painting" with suds from the sink

While I was cooking dinner one night, Piper kept herself busy by organizing my plastic utensils. I don't know why I found this so funny!

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18

Part of me cannot believe that Piper is a year and a half old. And another part feels like she's been in our family forever. We have been having so much fun lately; this is a great age!

We went to the doctor today for a checkup. Piper is now 23 pounds (32nd percentile! We've come a long way since the 2nd percentile!) and 31 inches long (39th percentile). She is right on target with her physical and cognitive development.

Other notable statistics:

She's talking! About two weeks ago, she Josh and I noticed that she was trying to say single words that we were saying--things like "cake" and "church". Of course, we are now getting her to say all kinds of things. Brand new words are fish, balloon, gorilla (this one's a little garbled), baby, cup, ball (not bop!), car, thank you, basket, outside, block, box, and shoes. I'm sure I'm forgetting some because I swear she comes out with new words every day. I guess that's the way it works!
She LOVES to read. Her favorite books are currently not storybooks; they are look and see books. She especially likes books with animals. I'm sure you can imagine her making all the noises that go along with each animal! She also loves books that she can manipulate. In addition to reading before nap and bedtime, she asks to read immediately when she gets up in the morning and again after nap. I love this!
Speaking of nap, she officially dropped her morning nap a couple months ago (but I kept forgetting to mention it here). This meant quite a change in our daily routine, but I'm now happy to have the extra time in the mornings to play and run errands.
She began insisting on drinking from our glasses and tried repeatedly to take the lid off her sippy, so we've started letting her practice drinking from an open cup. We've definitely had our accidents, but she's doing pretty well.
She knows all of her basic shapes: circle, square, rectangle, diamond, hexagon, oval, triangle, star, heart, and pentagon.
We're currently working on learning colors.
She can identify various balls such as tennis, basketball, beach, soccer, and baseballs.
She loves playing with the wooden puzzels we have. They have helped her learn her shapes and animals.
She gets better using utensils each day.
Her little face lights up when I ask her if she wants to color (I don't keep the crayons where she can reach them). She will scribble away in her notebook for 15 minutes at a time.

I don't have many pictures to go along with this post, but the ones I have won't load correctly. I'll have to post them separately.

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Wednesday, August 10, 2011

Just a reminder

To those who get my emails about new blog posts, remember that you should always follow the link to the blog itself because not everything always comes through correctly in the email. Case in point, yesterday's post has a video embedded in it that did not appear in the email version. I just don't want you to miss out on any cuteness!