Portugal here we come

We are all off to Portugal on the morrow for the Bial conference. This is quite an adventure as I am going to be giving my first talk in over a year (with my friend and colleague Nicola Holt) and Steve is going to be full time Daddy whilst I am doing the conference thing. The conference is in Porto (north west Portugal and home of Port - think we will be making some purchases whilst we are there!).
Hopefully the flight will be smooth with the little one, as with the US trip. We have some new toys to distract her, and the flight only lasts for a couple of hours. The conference ends on saturday evening, so we will have a couple of days to explore after it is all over, when we are planning on visiting some of the celtic areas north of Porto.
Sienna news: she is flipping herself over a lot. Her favourite thing at the moment (despite trying to walk and run!) is doing a 360 stomach turn/crawl. Unfortunately she does the flip thing in the middle of the night sometimes and finds herself stuck in the corner of her cot! Which she does not like one bit. She is continuing to babble and has been heard to say dadda as well as mamammama. All very cool.
Unfortunately, Sienna is somewhat grumpy this week, and we fear the imminent arrival of another tooth.
Hoping for some sleep tonight....a rare commodity at the moment. And not good when one is attempting to have half a brain cell and process the very interesting results from our study (we have found significant ESP effects!!!!).

walking, talking and sneezing

Sienna wants to walk. We think that she may well bypass the crawling stage for being on her feet. She wants to be on her feet all the time, and loves "walking" everywhere (as well as continuing to bounce, which gets harder as she grows more heavy) particularly to "worship" the dreamcatcher in our bedroom that she just adores (its rainbow coloured and she likes to flap the coloured threads coming out of it!). She has also developed some rather interesting babbling sounds over the last few days, and has frequently been heard to murmer mamamamama.....Perhaps not indiscriminately, but its really lovely to hear it! She has been a little grumpy/upset over the last few days as we have all three been floored by a rather nasty cold. We have been totally housebound and feeling rather cabin fevery, and felt like recovering agorophobics pottering around in the outside world, when we finally went out again.
We took Sienna to the Multisensory Room at the nearest Childrens Centre today - lots and lots of lights and bubbles and mellow music. She loved it at first, and then got a bit over stimulated and upset! Sleeping soundly at the moment.
Food situation: variable. Loves broccoli, avocado and sometimes likes sweet potato. Goes a bit manic for yoghurt, and didnt like my lentil dahl at all : (
7 months old this week - how time flies!