Vanessa begins to eat solid food

In Portugal, babies start eating solid food at 3 months. Manue's mother was surprised that Vanessa was still on milk and had already stocked up the pantry with jars of baby food. Well... since we were already in Portugal and trying to blend in with the locals (actually, Manue is sort of a local... she goes by Nella here), we decided to give it a try. Oh boy did V like that. She did her best to gobble up the rice cereal, but mostly made a big mess. Here's a video with Manue, her mom, and her brother watching.

Villa do Conde, Portugal

Here we are for the next two weeks, in rural Villa do Conde, Portugal. This is a small seaside village in the north of Portugal (right on the border between the Douro and Minho provinces). Manuela's parents usually spend most of the summer here. As you can see from the pictures, it's absolutely beautiful here. It's a fishing village, so you can get all sorts of fresh fish every day... the bakeries (pastelarias) are delicious and keep baking all day. There are a lot of yummy things I've discovered, like pastel de coco (a mini coconut tart), bola da berlin (a type of cream filled donut), pao de leite (a really soft bread roll that's sprinkled with sugar), and bachelau (dried codfish). Bachelau is really in a category by itself... apparently there are over 1000 recipes for it.

Here are some pictures of Villa do Conde... absolutely beautiful!

We fly to Paris

Somehow, we forgot to take pictures of V's first airplane ride from LA to Washington DC, but we managed to remember for the DC --> Paris flight. V loves airplanes... she's a big people person. Here are some shots of us in our tiny economy class seats.



Actually, we got very lucky and found an empty row, which we promptly took over. The airline attendants were very nice and sympathetic to our needs... or maybe they were just afraid they'd have a crying baby on board for 7 1/2 hours.


Here's our first glimpse of Paris - dark, cloudy, and rainy.

Virginia and Steven's family

The first leg of our trip was in Virginia, the birthplace of the USA (remember the battle of Yorktown?) After a 5 hour trip, Venice was dead tired, but my sister Helen picked us up at Dulles with her 3 year old daughter Annabelle and drove us four hours to my dad's house. Whew, talk about a long day.

We only had a week to stay here because we needed to be in Porgutal by the 22nd, but it was a good trip. My mom hadn't had a chance to visit us in LA, so this was her first time seeing Venice. By the way, Virginia is very, very humid in the late summer and fall. It's a good place to collect mosquitoe bites if you're interested.

Picasa has been acting funny lately, so here's a link to the pictures that were up here before:

Virginia

The camera is more interesting than mommy

Here's a little video proving that Venice is addicted to the camera. She can't stop looking at it even when mommy is trying to play with her!

Steven gets laid (off)

Surprising news today... the School of Education at LMU no longer needs a writer / editor, so Igot laid off. Luckily, I had a little over 4 weeks of vacation accrued (we had to cancel our Paris trip last December due to pregnancy complications) and they gave me a decent severance package, so we're not panicking even though we're new parents.

So what did we decide to do with ourselves? Take a long vacation for the rest of the summer. Yup, we're going to visit family for a while since I don't think I'll ever find a job where I can take a two month vacation. Bon voyage to the family Siu!