On Saturday we took a day trip to Winterplace, WVa with friends from church to snowtube. You can see in the pictures how pretty the day was, and the temperature was just right, too. It was awesome to spend so much time with our church family! It was a lot faster going down than I had anticipated! To consider Baby Fernandez, I sat on my bottom in the tube on all of the runs.Chris and Crystal went and I was glad...we were able to get to know them much better. They are a fun couple! They have an 11 month old daughter, Chandler, that Vivian likes to play with in nursery.This is how we got to the top of the hill (it's like the walkways at an airport, just going up)...a little scary at first because I felt I was going to fall off.But then everyone got brave and had snowball fights while riding it. Here's my hubby, probably starting it of course. I thought for sure we were going to get thrown out of the snowtube park. The guy with the loud speaker had to say something every time our group got on..."DO NOT throw snowballsNathan and Erin were the planners for the whole trip...thanks for doing all the work and inviting us, guys! It was a blast.The only frustrating thing of the day was the line we had to wait in...it was ridiculous! Someone said that it was the busy day that they've had all year. By the last few times, though, we were making it pretty fun. We stopped to eat at Outback in Christiansburg on the way home...what a perfect treat. We also celebrated Lauren's birthday (on the left in the back of the booth). It was a long day but fun, fun! Thanks to Gramme for keeping Vivian all day :)

Yesterday at the grocery store the cashier asked me when my next baby is due. Ahh! I thought she was going out on a limb by asking, but maybe I am showing a little baby belly these days! I'll get Aaron to take a belly shot asap. Baby Fernandez is about as big as an apple now :)

Vivian is 8 months old today :)
-I noticed a tooth coming in yesterday. This time I am sure! I can see it and feel it. It hasn't caused too much of a problem for her (although it could be why her naps have been a little short the last couple of days)
-We have pretty much dropped the 3rd late afternoon nap. However, if she wakes too early from her 2nd nap, I can guess that it will be too much of a stretch for her to wait until bedtime at 7, so she will take the 3rd nap. But lately she hasn't needed to.
-She really likes "If you're happy and you know it" in Spanish, and "The Wheels on the Bus" in English. She squeals when we sing these.
-Sometimes if I pucker my lips right in front of her face and ask for a kiss, she'll give me one! She puts both of her hands on my cheeks and brings her mouth to mine, wide open :)
-She has mastered the pincer grasp when it comes to picking up Puffs and putting them in her mouth. I just introduced Puffs recently as an afternoon snack and she loves them.
-If she wakes up too early in the morning, I can still go back to sleep because I can count on her to just play in her crib for a good 30 minutes, sometimes without making a peep! I'm thinking about putting a stuffed animal in there so she'll have something to play with when she wakes up.
-She's making all kinds of different sounds now. Not so much consonant sounds yet, though. She has recently learned to blow raspberries (I think that's what you call it?) with her tongue. Basically to me it's spitting...yikes.
-Not crawling yet, but she can pretty much maneuver around a room just by pushing backwards and turning.
-We think she is a sweetheart!

Last night Aaron came home from his work trip to Dallas, and Vivian and I had left him a belated Valentines surprise. We wrote love notes to him on these hearts :) She also helped me make a strawberry shortcake dessert for him. It was fun! I also took these pictures of Vivian and had them playing on a slideshow on our digital frame so he would see them when he walked in. She loves her Dad!

Hope we were able to make up for not celebrating on Saturday...Happy VDay, Aaron!

P.S. We will let these pictures count as her 8 month photos...her birthday is today! I'll post on her new 8 month stuff soon.

Unfortunately, and not purposefully, we had an uneventful Valentines Day. I was planning to do all the preparation for a fun holiday on Friday, but spent the whole day at the hospital (nothing to be concerned about...some bad abdominal pain, they couldn't tell me what it was, but baby is fine and the pain went away yesterday on its own). So Saturday I wasn't in a very romantic mood :(. But Vivian did get some Valentines! I took a picture to remember her first Vday: She got a sweet little Valentine from her friend Seth Morgan :) What a fun surprise! And Nanny sent Vivian a card, too. Nanny is Vivian's only Great, Great Grandmother!! Nanny is almost 100 years old, living in High Point, and we feel very honored that she remembered our daughter on this holiday. Nanny is the mother of Vivian, who was Aaron's grandmother. How special.
The fun part of our day was going over to Papa and Gramme's to see Grandma Dot, Stephen, and Michael for dinner. Grandma came from Raleigh to make us a Valentines dinner (yum!), Stephen came from DC for the weekend, and Michael came from Charlottesville to hang out. Thanks for the visit everybody!

Here is a video that someone took at Snowshoe. Seth is so sweet with her.

Notice at the very beginning (if you look closely) Vivian licking her lips. I mentioned it before because I'm glad she's not a drool box anymore, but now she does this so much during the day that I worry about her getting chapped lips! It's really cute, though...

Well, maybe she hasn't quite got it yet, but we do read together daily. She's just now getting to the point where she'll actually sit back and listen to me and look at the book instead of try to get her hands on it and eat it. I LOVE it when she looks up at me with curiosity, because she knows I'm using a different voice to tell the story. She is changing everyday!

This is her favorite book right now...it's in Spanish but the title in English is, "Where's the little bellybutton?". She likes it because you have to lift flaps to read the answers (The bellybutton is under the shirt, for example).
It's the element of surprise that she likes I guess.

We are headed back to Snowshoe tomorrow morning! I'm not sure if we'll have Internet access there, so it might be Monday until I can get some posts up. Have a great weekend!

Last Friday I had a prenatal appt for Baby Fernandez. Everything is going well! The heartrate was around 150 bpm (so precious!), and I haven't heard anything back from my blood tests, so everything must be okay. This pregnancy is very similar to the first one (not sick)...the only slight difference is that I feel a lot hungrier this time. That could have been because I was nursing Vivian during the first trimester, so maybe now I will not be eating every 45 minutes to an hour. !! I'm still pretty tired all the time, but thankfully on most mornings I am able to nap when Vivian does. I'll post belly pictures soon...it's growing a lot faster this time! Thank God for his favor :)

On Saturday Aaron and I took our little girl for her first swim at the Y. She is signed up for classes this month, so we thought we'd take her together first so she'd get a feel for it. She loved it! And so did we...it was so fun to watch her take it all in. There was a birthday party going on when we first got there, and it was LOUD in there. She paid more attention to the other kids than to the water. We swam for maybe 45 minutes with her. She's a natural! haha
Sorry the picture quality isn't great...I didn't have my camera so we used Aaron's phone.

playing in the very, very shallow water
I love the way her lips are pursed here...she has just started doing that this past week...she's learning how to swallow her saliva and she does the cutest thing with her lips! I'm glad because I won't have to change her bib so many times a day!

Yesterday's sermon was so important for me that I'm linking it on our blog today...I can't stop thinking about it! Our church posts sermons for download on their website here. Pastor Nick has been preaching from John...we are on chapter 14 now. It's awesome...take an hour to ponder God.

Vivian has been eating solid fruits (well, actually I've only used bananas) with this feeder. She has gotten the hang of using it, but I cannot figure out how to clean the mesh part of it. Moms who use this, do you have any ideas for me? I've tried everything, it seems, but there are still dried banana pieces stuck in there...yuck!

On Saturday we took a walk around the neighborhood. Vivian likes being outside, but it's so cold these days! Aaron has taken her running a couple of times in her new stroller that Papa and Gramme gave her for Christmas. It will be more fun when spring comes (and when we can figure out how to get her to sit up more in it...also need help on this one! It lays back so far that she's almost laying down and can't see anything).