You have been rolling from your belly to your back for many months. I think you first did this around two months, and it was quite startling at the time (for both of us)! I wasn’t expecting it, and clearly neither were you. That first time you rolled over so fast that your little head bumped the floor and you became upset. I hadn’t seen it coming and therefore wasn’t prepared to slow you down or protect your head. But from that moment on I knew to be prepared for you to roll and to be extra vigilant so that I could intercept you in the middle of the roll and slow you down before your head met the floor.

So over the months you’ve been rolling and rolling, always front to back, and then you’ve been quite content hanging out on your back after a roll. About four weeks ago you were clearly working on rolling back to front. You’d bring your legs in to your chest, then roll to your side, then straighten them in an attempt to roll over. You’d do this over and over, although you didn’t seem frustrated that you hadn’t yet succeeded. Until one day, you did. And then it was a constant repetition of you rolling from your back to your belly, then you’d get frustrated and seemingly forget that you knew how to roll to your back again, you’d start crying out and we’d roll you back to your back. Then you’d roll over again. And again and again and again this process repeats itself.

The problem is, you are doing this all day and all night long. We’ve learned that we cannot ever leave you on the changing table, even strapped in, because you wiggle around and roll over and have nearly fallen off. We’ve learned that when you’re in a fitful sleep you wiggle and roll, ending up on your belly which then wakes you up and makes you upset. But when we place you on your back again, you almost instantly roll over to your belly. I’m unsure why this is your natural reaction to being placed on your back, especially when it is clearly so frustrating to you to end up on your belly. And I wonder why you don’t just roll back over to your back, when you’ve had this skill for months. It is so fun and interesting, amazing and simultaneously perplexing, to watch you advance through the various steps of learning a new skill.