Finger Foods.

Well, since I've had the high chair, I have become more confident giving Eric more and more types of finger foods.  At first he didn't want to eat food that wasn't completely pureed, but little by little over the last week or so, he's becoming more and more accustomed to it.  He's also started to eat little pieces of rice cakes, one of the only things I could find here without added sugar or salt for him to try to eat on his own.  I've seen that one of the most common first finger foods used in the US is Cheerios cereal, but here in Spain I can only find the honey nut variety.  (Same goes for most cereals, like Rice Krispies, where most stores only have the chocolate flavored variety).

I tried giving him little pieces of banana and avocado, but they are very slimy and difficult for him to pick up, and so he really just plays with them, mashing them up all over the place.  It makes a huge mess!!  So, now I just take other fruits that aren't so slimy, and cut them into very tiny pieces, and he puts them into his mouth and gums the pieces for awhile before eventually swallowing them.  Lately his favorites are peaches and plums, but it's because I can pick organic, tree-ripened peaches and plums right off our trees in the garden right now.  He likes them so much more than other peaches and plums that he'd tried before!

Our peach and plum trees

Eric still doesn't have any teeth, but I'm not at all upset about that, because it's just one less thing for me to have to worry about.  No teeth means no worrying about what he eats before he sleeps yet, and no worrying about trying to brush them.  I have my suspicions that they will come in very soon, but I've thought that before and have been wrong.  Now, though, it seems like the anterior part of the ridge on his mandible feels a little harder and sharper than before.  It could be my imagination, though.  He's also always putting everything in his mouth, but he's been doing that, anyways, for quite some time now.

The weather lately has been very strange.  After days of having to put the air conditioner on, even at night, we went back to having to dress Eric in his winter pajamas. It was cool, cloudy and rainy for over a week. So, just after getting our pool ready with our homemade solar heater, there was no sun to give it a try.
Last Thursday afternoon, though, the sun finally came back, and I ran the heater all Thursday afternoon and Friday morning.  Even after letting the pump run for quite awhile, the water was still coming out really warm.  So it seems that our heater actually does work.

On Friday, the pool went from just over 70ºF to 84º in a couple of hours, so I decided it was time for Eric to give swimming in the pool a try.  He seemed to like the water, but wouldn't stop tightly grabbing me.  I decided that the best way to give him a little independence was to try to put him into the swimtrainer that I had bought him.  I didn't expect him to let me put him into it, but he surprised me.  Not only did he let me, but he also seemed pretty comfortable swimming in it by himself.  Take a look:

The pool isn't the only place that he's been able to get around, though. He's starting to "crawl" a little bit, but mostly moves around on the floor by pulling himself around.

To try to keep him in place a little, and to give him something new, fun, and inexpensive to play with, I bought him several inflatable toys.  One was an inflatable baby pool, but I bought some plastic balls for Eric to play with, and at times I fill it with the balls so that he can play with it inside.  Being so lightweight, it is easy for me to bring them in and outside for him to play wherever I am.

Using the solar heater to have warm water go directly from the big pool to the smaller pool, I can easily fill it outside so that Eric can play in it.  He really likes it because it has lots of things that you can squeeze or hit to make fun sounds.

I've been making lots of videos of him, swimming and attempting to talk, because he's been trying to do a lot of new things lately.  I'll have to go through them and post some of them soon.  For now, I want to get this post out, and I will work on another soon.

Before signing off, though, I will say that on Tuesday afternoon, he pulled himself up to standing, with the help of the couch, for the first time.  It was while he was talking to his grandma o Skype, so she got to see it.  He was trying to reach for the computer, which was on the sofa with the camera pointed at Eric, and was finally successful in pulling himself up!!  Go Eric!!