I thought I should send out a formal warning to prepare you all for what is about to happen. It’s been building up for a while. The tiny piece of womb debris I birthed is now mobile.
She’s been putting all her efforts into becoming mobile for the past few months. First she learned how to shuffle, and boy did she love to shuffle. But she could only really rotate 90 degrees so she soon realised it wasn’t a particularly useful skill, unless you count shuffling off the changing mat and pissing on the floor skilful? Incidentally I do, so I was most proud the first time she did this. But by the fifth time it was wearing thin.
Being a smart child she soon realised shuffling wasn’t going to get her anywhere fast, and so she worked on her next trick: rolling onto her side. She could soon do this in both directions, and so followed a period of nappy change hilarity. If I left the room momentarily while she was enjoying some naked time on her changing mat, she would quickly adopt a bomb-like position and, with military precision, she would swiftly roll off the changing mat to the left, do a bit of a wee, then roll back on herself and off the opposite side of the mat to finish the wee there. Needless to say, many a carpet cleaning hour of fun was had by all.
Being the intellectual that I am, I soon grew wise to her cunning wee plans, and so I started blocking her in if I left the room. The odd toy here and there meant she was then unable to wee on the carpet. I felt smug, I thought I had thwarted her evil plan. But, as I may have explained before, I birthed a genius and she soon discovered a more annoying place to wee.
Eventually she managed it. She rolled from her back to her tummy (rising up to the challenge of our rivals), holding her head proud she surveyed the world from this new position atop her changing mat. Within seconds she had decided what to do with her new skill. From this moment on, whenever I left the room, I returned to find her on her tummy sat in her own wee, baby vest drenched. She invented this game three weeks ago, and has not yet tired of it. We are getting through more outfits each day than ever before. She looks at me smugly each time as I change her, it’s threatening, we both know what it means (end of montage, fade out).
It was a warning. She was saying: “You think this is bad? Wait till I can really roll.” Well, I need wait no longer. For today she has managed this amazing task. I popped her down in the living room and went to get a drink, when I returned she was midroll. I watched her go a whole 360 degrees. She is now mobile. She rolled off her quilt and onto the floorboards. She banged her head lightly, and looked at me as if to say “Yeah. You better get your alert on because this parenting shizz just moved up to the next level.”
Being the over-excited mother that I am, I picked her up screeching about what a clever girl she was. I turned her around, she grinned at me. And it was then that I realised it’s about time I cleaned the floor. She had three bits of grass stuck to her face, a black unidentifiable object, and some hairs grasped in her slobbery fist.
I know that life has just become a whole lot harder now that Ebony is on the move, but I’m so excited to see her start to explore her surroundings in this new way. And, of course, excited about where she may start to wee now. The possibilities are endless.
While I’ve been writing this post, Ebony has been rolling around the living room, and every few minutes I’ve been picking hay, grass, dust and hairs off her slobbery face. It turns out a dribbling rolling baby is pretty much the human equivalent of those sticky rollers you can buy to get dog hairs off your clothes. So I shall be putting my feet up and having a rest while Ebony cleans the floors for me.
Out of interest, does anyone know if you can buy baby grows made of sellotape?