Proud to Be Portuguese

Through my maternal grandfather I am part Portuguese and my husband's father's family has roots in the Portguese Azores. How do we celebrate this heritage? By trying to hit a few Portuguese Festas each Spring/Summer in our local area. These festas , if I understand correctly, are religious festivals celebrating the Holy Ghost and other historical traditions of the Portuguese. They consist of a parade including royally dressed queens and their courts, marching bands and floats. The previous year's queens and their courts carry their crowns to the chapel at the end of the parade and place them on the altar which represents the sacrifice Queen Santa Isabela of Portugal made for the people during a time of tragedy and famine. This of course leads to our favorite part of the Festa, the food.

Following the parade, the traditional Portuguese soupas meal is served to parade participants and the public. Soupas is a traditional Portuguese meal prepared in recognition of celebrations. It consists of meat marinated and cooked for many hours, served along side of sliced French-style bread that is soaking in the meat broth. Volunteers bring several pans of meat and bread to each of the tables, and as long as people are eating, the food keeps coming. The meat is usually extremely tender and moist and with a cold orange Crush soda to wash it down, it's an annual treat I truly enjoy.

This last Sunday Kyle, his brother and parents, the kids and I all attended one of these memorable Festas. It was Miss Em's first and McGee's third time at this particular location. Both of the kids really had fun watching the marching band and hearing the loud, traditional music. They handed out some sweet bread this year too which we all enjoyed and the time spent with Grammy and Papa was a true bonus!

McGee, Daddy, Uncle Matt & Grammy watching the parade

Miss Em enjoying the sun and fun

Portuguese Men...

...and their women

Sharing lupini beans

Daddy and Miss Em playing around, she likes to bite his nose (ouch!)

Daddy loving on his precious girl

My Baby Is Growing Up

Many times I have caught myself in the moment, the moment when I realize Miss Em is no longer an infant, but my baby girl quickly growing up. I think because Daddy and I both feel our family is complete and don't expect for it to grow (*insert - we are always open to whatever God has planned for us though, so if He has more children in store for us we will rejoice in His blessing). Because of this feeling that Miss Em will be our last baby, I think sometimes I have a complete mental block to the fact that she is steadily growing and soon will become more of a toddler rather than my baby. I see other children, friends of ours who have turned 1 year old and begun to walk, and think how much bigger or older they seem, and then I look at my Em and although she's not small, in my eyes she seems like such a baby still.

Friday marked a day where our Miss Em started crawling for real (on her hands and knees rather than the very efficient army crawl she's perfected). There have been many times where she has gotten on all fours, rocked back and forth and taken off, but quickly lowered back down to her comfortable and quick army crawl position. Friday however she was crawling the real deal, and not just crawling. She also realized she could move around on her belly and sit up on her own whenever she wanted to. Here is a shot of her thoroughly enjoying the knobs on the kitchen (play kitchen) stove from her favorite new seated position:

This weekend has also brought about a new question to our parenting, what to do about a baby who likes to bite? The question and fear is out there for us - is our child going to be the child in the nursery who is known as the "biter"? Miss Em has bitten her brother a couple of times this weekend and daddy and myself as well. In the instances where she bit McGee, McGee and I were sitting on the floor and she was trying to crawl up us. I wonder if maybe her biting McGee's arm was just an attempt to use her mouth to pull her up closer to us? Is this just a phase of her exploring with her mouth? Is she just teething and soothing her gums by biting onto nice soft flesh (ouch!)? It's hard to think of my baby girl actually biting out of frustration, so for now I will just try to take it all in stride and do my best to reinforce that biting is not allowed in our home. McGee has taken it upon himself to be the bite police, I hear him telling her, "No biting Em, no bite." I just don't remember this issue with McGee, but then again each child has their own issues and it's nice to know God enjoys giving us a variety to keep us always learning and growing.

Helping us recycle from the baby shower I threw Sunday, but plastic water bottles is probably not the best teether option...