Roll Away

Probably the biggest milestone to come out of our household this weekend was that Nicholas, unattended, assisted, and unprovoked, rolled over. All along, he's been real uncertain (for lack of a better term) about rolling over. If you put him on his stomach, he didn't have any trouble flipping back over to his back. But starting from his back, he would use his feet to turn his waist that way, but the 'bottom' arm kinda got in his way, and I guess he figured that it was too much effort to overcome it, because he'd usually go right back to the position he started in.

Last night, Leah and I were chilling out at home, sitting on the couch and chaise lounge; Nicholas was in the floor in front of us, laying on a quilt that we frequently spread out for him. Out of the blue, he rolls from his back to his stomach, and actually continued rolling the same direction, back to his back. Probably not 10 minutes later, he did it again. Leah was very excited, and she raced to get his baby book to write down today's date as the "official" date that he first rolled over. With some coaxing, he might've done it a handful of times in the past, but never alone and unassisted.

I remember several weeks ago, I was over at Stacy & Mike's (parents of Abby, who is 9 1/2 weeks Nicholas's senior), and Abby had recently started to roll over. It was almost as if she had learned a new trick and had become very good at it. They layed her down, and said that in just a few seconds, she'd flip right over. Almost on cue, she did it. Nicholas isn't really to that point, but perhaps he will be. I think that Christy, our babysitter, works with him a great deal as far as floor and "tummy" time, so maybe he'll get lots of practice of his newfound ability. Of course, he has also started to express his desire to stand up, so we've wondered, albeit facetiously, if his desire is to skip crawling and go straight to walking (does that even happen?!).

It just dawned on me that we'll always be able to remember the first day Nicholas rolled over--Leah's very first Mother's Day.