Roll, Baby, Roll!
I’ve been humoured by the blob quality of newborn babies. They just get moved around and plopped down, picked up, changed, bathed, fed. Everything happens to them, they can’t actually consciously move. This is why I was so impressed with the milestone that Clara reached two weeks ago when she rolled over on her tummy. It took her a number of tries and a lot of kicking and screaming and persistence but she finally achieved it. This felt like a huge milestone because it was probably her first conscious act. Her first step to being mobile and to independence.
I quickly also found what this milestone means for my free time. While Clara is having a ball rolling on her tummy any chance she gets, she doens’t actually like staying on her tummy (in spite of the daily tummy time workouts!). This means that as soon as she has turned over she will cry and scream for someone to turn her back on her back.
I was surprised initially that babies would learn to go back-to-tummy first and then get 
stuck there for a few weeks when they learn the reverse motion, until I learned that babies’ heads make up a quarter of the proportion of their bodies! Now I have to laugh every time I look at a baby because I am so conscious of the huge melons they have to lug around all day. Imagine how different we would look if we kept those proportions as grown-ups. No wonder the poor things are so exhausted at the end of every day, from all the effort it takes just to hold their heads in place!
