Fun in the Sun

Summer is here and I have not posted to the Blog in almost a YEAR?!?! What can I say, life is busy. I am writing this post mostly for my Grandparents who are in Indiana in the summer. I plan to post a LOT of pictures in this post so they can see what we have been up to this summer and see some new pictures of Sabrina. So, HI GRANDMA AND GRANDPA! This blog post should be better than trying to e-mail you all the pictures and risk the e-mail being too large.

4th of July in AZ was unusually cool, which I don't think anyone minded at all. It was actually raining in the morning and cleared out by the afternoon, the rest of the day was nice and mild. I think the high that day was only 85 or something. We live next door to the Cincinnati Reds/Cleveland Indians spring training park and the City sets off fire works there each year so we had a good view of the fireworks from the neighborhood. This was the first time Sabrina had seen fireworks and she liked them a lot. She wasn't scared either. She just calmly watched and oohed and awwed.

As the week has continued since the 4th, the weather has warmed up again to 110+ so today we took Sabrina to a park nearby where they have a "Splash Pad" where kids can play in fountains and other water activities. This was the second time we have taken her and she had a blast! There were plenty of other kids there so I had to make sure to keep up close behind her to make sure she didn't get caught under someones feet. But she did great.

This weekend, we also got Sabrina's pictures taken again to mark her almost being 1 1/2 years old and something to mark the summer. So the pictures were 4th of July themed and she wore red, white, and blue. I have a couple preview pictures to post here, but there were so many great shots taken. We purchased a CD with all of the images to share later when the picture order comes in. 

6 Months Already?!?

Time is moving so quickly, and I dont know how I feel about it yet. Sabrina is 6 months old now! When did that happen?

Everything in the Vazquez  house is going GREAT! Now that Sabrina is 6 months and I have been back to work for 3 of them, things have settled down a bit and we have found a nice routine and order to our daily lives as parents. Arturo and I have what I call a "tag team" system where each of us handles certain aspects of daily life and tasks. Nothing was formally assigned, it just sort of happened. We make a great team!

Sabrina is growing and growing. She has her 6 Month check up in a week, so I will update with her weight and height then but she still eats really well and we have incorperated solid foods into her daily diet. Making baby food was fun, but after a few bad batches with some foods that didn't turn out so well, I decided to cut my losses and buy pre-made foods for her. This will save a lot of time, and with her, every moment is important since Arturo and I both work full time. She has tried a good variety. She has had: sweet potato, squash, apple, peaches, banana, carrot, and green bean. She doesn't seem to be a picky eater really, the only thing she didnt take to well to were apples and peaches, but probably because they have a little tartness to them. We mix apples with cereal and she tolerates it a bit more that way, but peaches are a bit harder to cover up, so we will try those again later I think. We certainly don't mind that she seems to love vegetables though.

Here are some pictures of Sabrina from when she got her pictures taken recently. They turned out so great! You can see that she has already developed quite a personality.

5 Months - Baby food and a Photo Shoot

I had the day off work today and Sabrina and I hade a Mommy/Daughter day! It began by getting her pictures taken at JC Penny. She did so amazing. She was well behaved but slightly camera shy, she did not want to smile for the photographer, she was just calm and cool the whole time. But she was still very beautiful and the pictures came out great. I ordered some prints and they will be in a week from now. I'm excited to mail them out to our family.

After her pictures we went shopping! At JC Penny I found her some really cute clothes on clearance for $3 and $4. Then we went to Babies R Us to buy some reuseable containers for her babyfood, and we even went to Wal-Mart. We were out for over 3 hours and she never fussed once! She definitely took a LONG nap when we got home.

Since Sabrina turned 4 months we introduced rice cereal and she has caught on to eating solids very well. Today I made her first batch of homemade baby food. I started with sweet potatoes, she really liked them. She will have those for a few days to rule out any allergic reactions, then I plan to have her try apples, I made the batch of apples tonight too and froze everything in single serve portions. The cost difference is amazing when it comes to making your own babyfood. Today's batches of food were 32 oz of sweet potato and 16 oz of apples and it cost me $3.50 the same amount of food in jars would have cost me about $20. If I can keep up with this, I will save so much money!

Thats about all we have been up to!
Here are some pictures! A sneek peek of Sabrina's photoshoot and a picture of her babyfood I made.

4 Months and a Wake Up Call

This past week has been very crazy. Last Saturday my father ended up in the hospital for what he thought was something fairly simple that turned out to be much more serious. I won't go into details because its somewhat personal, but he ended up needing to have surgery. All is well with him now and he is healing well but while he was there they ran bloodwork on him and discovered he is diabetic and also has high blood pressure. So needless to say he was very overwhelmed with all of this new information, along with the fact that he had to have surgery. He spent two days in the hospital, and I did everything I could to make sure I was there for him, I was so worried for him and everything he was going through. Thankfully this experience can serve as a bit of a wake up call, not just to him, but our whole family to be sure to take good care of ourselves and our health because you never know what waits around the corner. My dad has a long road ahead of him filled with a lot of life long changes, but he is a strong man and I know he will do great!

On a more up beat note: Sabrina had her 4 month check up on June 21st and she weighed 11lbs 4oz and was 24 3/4 inches tall. The doctor said she looks awesome and is developing very well. In fact a couple days later she rolled over from her back to her stomach all on her own! Life is so good! Every day gets easier and now I sometimes can't imagine our lives before she was here, it has become so natural now.

It is 4th of July weekend and I dont know if we have any plans really. We live close to the Goodyear Spring Training Facilities and they will be letting off fireworks there tomorrow night. We may drive the car over to the next neighborhood over that faces the ballpark and watch the fireworks from there and come right back home but thats about it. No big plans. Its way too hot to try and BBQ and nobody we know has a pool, so we mostly try to stay in out of the heat. (It was 119 degrees today! OUCH!)

Here are some pictures of Sabrina that we took when she turned 4 months old!

Our Little Family

Welcome to the new blog!
Our family blog will focus on our daily life as a new family with our sweet little girl.
I will try not to make all the posts baby related, however our lives DO revolve around Sabrina these days.

Since Sabrina was born our lives have changed in so many wonderful ways. Arturo spent 2 weeks at home with me on maternity leave and it was a great opportunity to bond as a family. I went back to work when Sabrina was 11 weeks old and now that I have been back to work for a month we have fallen into a good routine during the week and Arturo and I work well together to "tag team" all of the daily tasks to help things run smoothly.

Now that Sabrina is alomost 4 months the newness is slowly wearing off and we dont feel like rookies all the time anymore, there are still days when we are reminded of our inexperience but we take it all in stride. But all in all we are getting more comfortable with our roles as parents.

A couple weeks ago we had our first family outing to the Arizona Science Center. I have to admit, we were slightly nervous, would Sabrina do well with all the people? would she cry? would she have a massively messy diaper and get it all over the place? We did our best to be prepared, fed and changed her right before and Arturo carried her in the Baby Bjorn carrier and she was so happy and content the whole time looking at the exhibits. She got tons of compliments from people for being such a good baby! The second half of the outing she fell asleep. SUCCESS!!!! We felt so proud of ourselves afterwards! We did it!

The next day Arturo and I had our first Date outing since Sabrina was born. It was WAY overdue. We only went to see a movie but it was great! I felt like we were dating again. My parents babysat and loved every minute of it (or so they say) I almost feel like I was the one doing them a favor so they could have some one on one time with her.

Well thats about it for today! I will do my best to keep things current by updating the blog once a week hopefully. I hope you all enjoy the adventures to come!