Rock and Roll

I witnessed a momentous event this weekend. Something that made me literally squeal with delight and jump up and down. My daughter rolled from her stomach to her back.

Maybe that wasn’t what you were thinking of when I said “momentous” but there are few other ways to describe an action that makes four grown adults leap from their seats and cheer, giggle, and applaud. We knew that “The Roll” was coming. My wife and I were rushing around getting ready for work and we had put our daughter on a blanket on the floor for Tummy Time (for the uninitiated, Tummy Time is simply time that infants spend on their stomachs, it, like many other things that parenting books and experts suggest, will make your baby a stronger, smarter, happier, more understanding and disease-free person). We can back into the room to find our daughter on her back. Wait a minute. Tummy Time requires one to be on their tummy. How did she end up on her back? Holy shit, she rolled over! My wife lamented that we had missed the moment of the first roll and immediately put my daughter on her stomach again and pleaded for her to do it again. No dice.

But over the weekend it happened. We had her on a blanket at my parent’s house and she lifted her head, cocked it slightly to the right, and rolled right onto her back. My mother, wife and I all cheered. My dad came running. My daughter looked at us like we were crazy and then broke into a smile, realizing she had done something good. We spent the next thirty minutes putting her onto her stomach and saying: “Come on honey, do it again. Roll over. Roll over.” We coaxed her with toys in front of her face and did the “Raaaaayyyy” cheer every time she succeeded in getting to her back. In a matter of minutes my daughter had turned into a mildly well-trained beagle.

But for over three months she has been a motionless blob. She has only recently become a smiling, grabbing, drooling motionless blob. To have her become a smiling, grabbing, drooling, sometimes-able-to-roll-over-slightly-to-her-right blob is pretty exciting. Momentous even.