Getting Around!!

It's amazing how once Eric develops a new skill, he is very determined to perfect it, and improves very quickly.  Lately, of course, the main focus of his energy is moving himself around.  Like I showed you in the videos in the last post, he's getting really good at moving himself around.  Last week, he could move around on the floor by sliding around in the sitting position, but if he fell on his belly, he would start crying because he couldn't get himself back up.  This week, though, he is able to get up to sitting again when he falls down.  He can even do a more conventional crawl.

Speaking of videos, I wanted to mention to those people who subscribe to this blog and receive posts as emails when the new entries are published, that the videos that I upload to YouTube and later embed in the blog do not show up in those emails.  So, if you are only reading the messages in your emails, you are missing out on the various videos of how Eric is really progressing. 

Anyways, apart from being more mobile, Eric is also getting better at communicating.  He doesn't talk yet, but he has his own ways of letting me know what he needs or wants at any given moment.  He has a certain way of laughing when he wants something to drink, and especially when he wants to nurse.  He likes to take breaks while eating to drink water out of his sippy cup.  Since he can't drink by himself quite yet, though, he lets me know when he wants to drink.  When he wants milk, the laughing is accompanied by tugging at my shirt.  Of course this is often at very inconvenient times, especially like when he is in the cart at the supermarket.  Now that he can ride in the top part of the cart instead of needing a special cart with a baby seat, he's at the perfect level to be pulling at my shirt the whole time while shopping.  It's hard not to laugh about it.
His new interest in getting up and moving around seems to have started to affect both his eating and sleeping.  There are times lately when he wakes up in the middle of the night and wants to get up and crawl around the crib.  He seems to have no interest in going back to sleep again.  So, just when I was starting to get used to our new schedule of sleeping and naps, it is back to being irregular again.  The last two days it has even worsened and it is almost impossible to get Eric to take his naps.  So, just when I was used to him taking longer, better naps, he now doesn't want to sleep at all.
Also, the one thing that I could always count on was for Eric to eat what I gave him to eat, and to many times even want more.  Lately, though, it's hard to get him to sit still long enough to eat.  I sit him in the high chair, and he starts fussing to get down.  I can get him to eat, but I often have to distract him with a toy or let him play with his glass, getting water all over the place.  Instead of being in the chair less time, he ends up being stuck there for longer because it takes so long to get him to eat all or most of his food.  The only thing that he seems to still want to always eat is the yogurt that I make for him.

I have to be very careful with Eric now, too.   He is so much quicker than he was.  I used to be able to leave him in the middle of the living room, run to do something quickly in another room, and when I got back, he usually hadn't been able to move very far from where I had left him.  Now, though, he can follow me pretty quickly.  As long as he wants to follow me, it isn't so much of a problem, but knowing that he can move so quickly, I realize that he could choose to do more dangerous things.  So, we'll have to work on making sure that there aren't very many dangerous things for him to get into.  Little by little I've been going around the house trying to fix that.

Otherwise all is well.  It might be more difficult to take care of Eric lately, but it is also more gratifying because he is able to show us so much more of his personality.  He seems to be a very happy baby, and it is easy to get him to smile and laugh.  The easiest way to do that now again lately is to show him Sheena or Molly.  He gets very excited when he sees them, and always gives them a big smile or laugh.  Molly isn't usually quite as excited to see Eric, but she handles him pretty well.  Often she'll be on the floor, and Eric will crawl over to her, and she puts up with quite a bit before finally deciding to get up and walk away.  Sheena, on the other hand, often actually goes over to Eric to try to get him to play with her.  For now, that really doesn't work, and instead sometimes Sheena will upset Eric without trying, like when she hits him in the face with her wagging tail.  So, he occasionally gets mad at her, but always ends up forgiving her rather quickly because the next time he sees her he's once again smiling and laughing!!

There's not much else new to tell you this week except for the fact that I received a few things for Eric in the mail.  He got a very cute pair of Nike Shox, but is getting so used to going around barefoot that he isn't too excited about wearing them.  I also got some perfectly cube-shaped ice cube trays which make organizing the freezer so much easier.  I saw the idea on another mother's blog, and decided that I needed to have some similar trays.  I still need to use up the food that I have frozen already, but little by little I'm starting to have an inventory of cube-shaped frozen baby foods.  They fit in my freezer so much better, and make it so much easier to find what I need.  I'll show pictures later, but first, I have an urgent blog post to publish!!
I had been waiting to publish this one until I got a few more pictures... but that will have to wait.  I'm publishing now "as is" so that I can share the new events from this weekend in another post right away!