No interest in rolling over - Non ha alcun interesse a rotolarsi

My daughter is almost 8 months and hasn't really shown any interest in rolling back to front. She rolled (or gravity took her?) from front to back starting around 3
or 4 months. But despite lots of back time (playmat, back to sleep, strategically placed toys out of reach) she doesn't seem to have much interest in rolling over. She'll make it over to her side and then seemingly give up. (Her lower arm gets in the way?) We've let her be to see if she'll make the turn on her own, and also given her some verbal encouragement. No luck.
Sometimes, she'll rotate around or scoot 180 degrees on her back to get what she could have gotten just by rolling over.
I know "they" say that rolling over isn't a milestone, but I'm a little worried. Have other moms gone through this? I'm trying not to be bothered by the "all her friends are doing it" paranoia... :)
As a side note - she is sitting up unassisted and has been for some time.
Thanks for your insight!
Mom 1

This happened to us with my son who is now 23 months. He was sitting and not rolling and we thought he would be fine, so we did not press the issue. At 12 months, he was not even close to walking, so our pediatrician put us in Early Intervention. I am really glad we did that because the rolling was crucial to him building the core strength he needed to finally walk. I am not sure why he was not rolling, but it was one of the building blocks he was really missing and once he started rolling with her guidance, the rest came quickly. Not sure if that is your situation or not, but we were very grateful for the help.
Mom 2

My son was a chunk and probably rolled over twice by 8 months. Once he got sort of crawling (backwards) he decided that rolling was useful to get into a new position and started to use it. If she is sitting then I would not worry developmentally, rolling is just not her thing.
Mom 3

Well, my daughter was the same way, and she's fine now at 25 months. She sat early but just never got in to rolling over - or crawling, for that matter. She stuck with the butt-scootch. I think that her abnominal muscles remained a little weak until somewhat recently, but she was cruising before 12 months and walking independently a few months later, and now she runs, rolls all around, climbs on everything.. .
Mom 4

My baby will be 9 months tomorrow, is crawling all around, and rolled from back to front for the first time last week (twice, in one day, and not once since then). He rolls front to back maybe once a month. He's my third baby and I remember my first was absolutely determined to roll and figured it out early, but this guy just doesn't care to and I'm not the least bit worried. They are all different, and I think you'd see deficits in other areas if there was any reason to be concerned.
Mom 5

I understand your anxiety but I really don't think you have anything to worry about. Sounds like your daughter is totally normal. My son (12 months) had a similar issue in that he started rolling from front to back around 4 months but never got the hang of rolling from back to front. His arm would get in the way and also he didn't really like bonking his head on the floor which would inevitably happen on the few occasions when he would manage to flip all the way over. He's a year old now and achieved all his milestones right on target or even a little early. I think the main concern is that the baby is mobile at all, not that they achieve some goal by a certain age. In fact, some babies never roll over or crawl at all! The fact that your daughter is sitting up, scooting around and maneuvering herself into the position she wants seems to suggest she's doing really well. Maybe she just likes doing things her way and not "by the book!"
Mom 6

Hi - I have a slightly different take than some of the other respondents to your question. My daughter also did not roll, but sat, played, interacted, and later, walked on time. Someone suggested that I get an evaluation by the Early Intervention people, and it was *terrific*. They explained that while everyone hits milestones at different times, and rolling might not be "her thing", it can be a sign of lower muscle tone and that specific exercises (I know, it sounds crazy for an infant) can help. They showed me how to encourage her by placing toys just so, and play specific games that built core strength. It was free, high quality, in my home on my schedule and was very educational for me in many ways.
hope this helps!
Mom 7

Hey - I am so relieved to read your comments. My baby boy, William Mario, will be a year old next Friday. Only recently he has shown interest in rolling (in the last three weeks). Before that, he was happy sitting and playing with the toys close to him. I changed play mat at least 5 times, then put him to play on the rough rogue which we have in our living room. He would prefer to lye down on the rogue than to try to reach for the toys that were not close to him. I tried all sorts of tummy time toys, from mirrors, including one with sea animals attached to it playing a music each time the boy was touching it to different types of pillows, including an inflatable one with rattle balls, books opened in front of him, a special wooden toy with letters a physical therapist suggested that I use, balls of all colors and textures, wooden blocks, even my cellphone, the remote control and my shoes! - my boy wanted to play with them so badly! -, now we have even started a music class which is supposed to encourage gross motor skills in babies - yet, a week from his first birthday, my boy has not shown interest in crawling. He can stand up but not for long and with help.



William standing up all by himself (for few minutes) in the yard of his new house

I am now thinking that I should just be happy with his recent "rolling exploits" and stop looking for toys, tools, exercises, classes, ideas from other moms. Perhaps all I should do is play with my boy the way he likes playing and enjoy every moment of it. Surely, when he decides it's the right time, he will stand up and I don't expect that he will start walking right after that. He will probably only start making tiny baby steps. And I will no longer worry about what should come next.

William's Mom

Father's Day: 20 June 2010 - Il Giorno del Papa': 20 Giugno 2010

Enrica made this great video for me.

Enrica ha fatto questo bellissimo video per me. :) John

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tbmVeoRdQYQ

Overheard at the mall - Succede sempre allo Shopping Center

I was feeding William at the mall while Enrica bought us a couple of sandwiches. Some high school girls at the next table were mesmerized by Tronk. One of them giggled and said, "I want to be a teen mom!"

Stavo dando da mangiare a William allo Shopping Center mentre Enrica ci ha comprato due panini. Delle ragazzine del liceo al tavolo dopo sono rimaste incantate alla vista di Tronk. Una di loro sorrideva tutta super carica di emozioni e diceva "Voglio essere una ragazza madre!"

John

Pa-pa-pa-pa, Nanna-na-na-na, Dam-dam-da, Ta-ta-ta, Gat-ta. Does he speak Italian already? - Parla gia' italiano?

William has had a lot more to say recently. He no longer just says Mamma-ma-ma-ma. Also, Da-da da-da, Pa-pa-pa-pa, Ehem, ehem, ehem, Nanna-na-na-na, Nonna, Dam-dam-dam. And ahai, ahai, ahai. Followed by uei, uei, uei, hee, hee, ueio, ueio, rrrrr, ruuuu, ruuuu, yeahh, rueii-ei-ei, yeahi, yeahi etc, sounds which has he has been making a lot, with a happy, cheerful, annoyed and sometimes angry tone, in the car and while playing by himself. It has been a delight to listen to him, always wondering what these sounds actually mean to him. As a true Italian putting meanings to things that don't have any, I can't help telling the world that all this means a huge amount!

It means that William has started speaking. And, si, si, si, si! his first words are in Italian, off-course! At 10 months and a half he can already say 5 words! "Mamma, Papa', Nanna, Nonna and Dammi". Isn't this amazing? Even if what I actually hear is often something like "mamma-ma, pa-pa-pa, gnalla, nogna and dam", I know he means "Mamma, Papa', Nanna, Nonna and Dammi"! and I cannot be happier. My son speaks Italian already. Then the American mom in me comes out and says "come on, stop it. It is not all meaningful. The words I hear coming out of William's mouth are just sounds that he has probably managed to put together as a result of imitating the sounds he has heard from us. So, no illusions. William has no clue of what he is saying!". "yes but how about when he makes a sound and then shake his head as to reinforce his disapproval on what I have just said? and how about when he goes on and on in a conversational tone as if he was presenting a lecture to a large audience of people? and how about when he burst into laugh when I say something he thinks is funny and smiles just after I say something to comfort him? Take yesterday for example. In the middle of the afternoon a huge rain storm came. The wind was so strong, it smashed trees and other things I heard break and fall in my neighborhood. William all of a sudden burst into tears frightened. As soon as after I said to him "va tutto bene amore, va tutto bene amore" he stopped. I swear that as soon after that he started saying "mamma-ma-ma, mamma, mamma, mamma" with a cheerful tone as to say "Grazie mamma. I feel much better" even before I picked him up. I know he meant that. I just know. William is calling me now. I'll better go to try to understand what he needs. My interpretation, off-course.

4 days before his first birthday:
He said Tata. Maybe he like his tata Pina. And as soon after I miaowed at the cat. he said gat-ta. Bravo William!

I WILL SOON POST A VIDEO OF HIS MEANINGFUL CHATTING HERE

What is this blog for? - A cosa serve questo blog?

William is becoming 10 months old this coming Sunday. Only two months before his first birthday! Hard to believe I have been his mother and John has been his father for all this time. With us as a family, this blog has grown fast. How did this all start and where is it going? The other day I read an article about the recent moms blogging phenomena. The article was saying that blogging seems to have become the favorite past-time of the moms, after shopping for clothes, going to get beauty treatments and drinking coffee. In the article there was also a mention to the moms being paid for talking about baby products in their blogs. I went to look at some of these blogs: mostly stories about super moms dreaming of publishing the next bestseller while talking about poop and poop and poop. Fair enough, but what about the babies? Do we get an idea of what is happening in the life of the babies from reading these blogs? Not really. From reading some of the postings, you do get an idea of what is happening in the moms' life though. Are the babies excuses for the moms to write and glamorize their no longer glamorous life? Perhaps. While I was reading one of the blogs mentioned in the article, I saw pictures of very expensive designers clothes, baby gears, toys and kids snacks like Kinder cioccolato (not the kind of food you would expect to see in the recommendations of a mom). One of the moms was even talking about her "secret pleasure of sucking a chupa chupa" lollipop after nursing her son. There was a very attractive shot of the product next to it!

So what is my reason for maintaining this blog? How about if I also end up increasing the market shares of Starbucks by repeatedly mentioning my visits to their coffee shops in my postings to take William out of the house and to keep the blog up-to-date? How about William's tommy time I keep talking about and the toys I keep buying for him, which I have probably shown in the blog more than once? How is my blog any different than all these other moms' blogs out there?

Let's see. This blog started when I first felt I had a baby inside my tommy (the day Dr. Vassilikis said that I was pregnant). On that day, all of a sudden, I felt the need to record everything. Every moment of his life. And when I first heard his heart beating, I felt the need to see him and to give him the ability to speak. Ho sentito il bisogno di visualizzare le sue azioni, i suoi desideri, le sue sensazioni, le sue emozioni. E di ascoltare la sua voce, le sue parole, i suoi pensieri. Sorry for suddenly switching into Italian. I sometimes feel that it is in our roots and upbringing (our parents' roots), it is in our mother tongue that we can sometimes understand our habits, our likes, our thoughts, ourselves. So perhaps here it is. The reason I started this blog was because I needed a place for me to tell William who I am, who he is and perhaps, one day, to help him understand who he will be. For this reason, in some cases, I switch from English to Italian.

Like now, for example...

Parte della nostra identita' e' l'identita' del luogo in cui viviamo, disse nel lontano 1997 la mia cara amica di liceo Laura Lettini nella sua tesi di dottorato in psicologica. In quell'anno, io mi trovavo a Londra, alla ricerca di nuove esperienze. Anch'io, come tanti italiani, mi trovavo alla ricerca di una nuova identita'. Anch'io evitavo gli zainetti Invicta ed i luoghi comuni, come ad esempio, il bisogno della marca o delle "cose alternative" e cercavo qualche cosa in piu'. In Inghilterra (a Londra ed a Oxford in particolare), non solo ho potuto continuare a fare l'adolescente, ma sono anche riuscita ad eliminare i sensi di colpa connessi con l'essere adolescente e con il non prendere responsabilita'. Questo da un lato ha rafforzato la mia pigrizia, dall'altro mi ha incoraggiata a fare cose con un po' d'incoscienza che, quando vivevo in Italia, probabilmente, non avrei mai fatto. Per esempio, a provare a fare la Senior Account Manager nella piu' grande agenzia pubblicitaria del mondo (la McCan Erickson a Londra) senza aver mai messo piede in un'agenzia di pubblicita' a servizio completo prima di allora, neanche in Italia. Ho avuto il coraggio di distribuire all'ingresso di un'altra famosa agenzia Londinese barre di cioccolato con il mio nome. Ho avuto il coraggio di inviare una spogliarellista che lavorava in un club notturno di Londra ad un dirigente della Leo Burnett per farmi assumere dalla loro agenzia. Studiando la sera, mi sono diplomata con un master in scienza a Londra. Prima di questa esperienza avevo soltanto studiato per un diploma in grafica pubblicitaria. Non per una laurea vera e propria. Senza avere una base ne' in ingegneria, ne' in infomatica, ne' in matematica, sempre studiando la sera, mi sono messa a fare un dottorato di ricerca in bioingegneria. Ho poi lasciato questo per sposare tuo papa', per andare a vivere con lui negli Stati Uniti e per occuparmi di te. Ed ora che sono lontana dall'Italia e che ho questa strana identita' italo-anglo-americana, se cosi' la posso definire, mi sento un po' piu' obiettiva, un po' piu' aperta di vedute, un po' piu' flessibile, in certe cose un po' piu' forte, in altre un po' piu' fragile. Allo stesso tempo, mi sento anche piu' italiana di quanto mi sia mai sentita da quando ho lasciato l'Italia. Ho una voglia matta di mangiare la pasta con il sugo, di andare al bar a prendere l'espresso la mattina presto, di sentire le canzoni melanconiche dei cantautori italiani, di essere coccolata e di coccolare, di immergermi nei libri di Calvino e di Pavese, di andare a fare una passeggiata la domenica mattina con le inferriate dei negozi giu' e di sentire la campana della chiesa della Crocetta vicino a casa far din don. Mi manca l'Italia.

Back in English...

So yes, this blog is not about poop and baby gears. It is about the story of my son William Mario, but also and above all about my daily need to communicate with him and with the people who love him, to cry, to laugh, to share, to relate and to be close to him.

Made with boiled water only? How about the fluoride? - Fatto con acqua bollente? Cosa? Senza fluoro?

The average American mom must go through an average of 200 (just a guess - it might be more) worrying thoughts and related bits of reassurance , per day. Take the teething problem for instance. I have not met a single mom who has not worried about giving their child toys that can ease the pain of the teeth growing and bothering their babies. If in the old days children were encouraged to deal with the pain of new teeth attacking their soft gums all by themselves as a way to learn and become strong, nowadays children are given "pacifiers purpose" rubbery toys of all shapes, colours, textures and sounds to put in their mouth and chew to make them feel better. These colorful evil things are hanging on the handles of strollers, car seats, they clutter people's cars and houses. You see them each time you meet a baby. I once heard a mom, whose's son was not sleeping through the night, say that she was considering buying the 20 dollars giraffe teething toy that mostly all moms I have met end up submit themselves to in order to avoid feeling the guilt that their children were going through more pain that they should have gone through!

I don't want to get too much into the food topic because that deserves a posting on its own but I will add some questions that are stuck in my mind from hearing them so often. "OMG, are you giving your daughter finger food at 8 months? Are you not scared that she is going to choke? What finger food are you giving your kid? Organic, right? Does that special cup from Fisher Price works? Cool, I am going to buy it!". As an Italian I grew up in a country where children are given pasta con il pomodoro straight from their plate in the first few months of their life (at 4 months). Despite children are kept either at home or bundled up to protect them from getting colds, in Italy being a good parent also simply means not leaving the kids unattended, at home or in the car for example. So I can't help finding the American super cautious moms' thoughts overwhelming. What do I do when William gets older and goes to kindergarten? Am I supposed to become that kind of mom too? Last week the super cautious better mom's behavior reached its highest point. First, a bunch of frightening emails on the bacteria present in the tap water, which were threatening the life of us and of our children, reached my inbox. My husband drove me all the way to Sloughton to get hold of bacteria free water. We ended up going home with nearly 300 bottles of water of 8 ounces each because the other bottles were gone. Did we really need to buy all those bottles to get through the two days of 5 or 10% of unsure water we could have been drinking before the 100% safe lawsuits proof Bostonian water would reach our houses again? At least we had some extra water, just in case, the temperature would suddenly rise up in the next couple of days, or just in case the baby would suddenly decide to eat more solids and to be more thirsty. But in this latter case, "would you give your child bottled water with no fluoride destroying his teeth?" were wondering a bunch of worried moms in one of the moms list I belong to. Here comes the question that has bothered me for a while now: "should I worry to worry less or to worry more?"

William has given me his first kiss - William mi ha dato il suo primo bacio

It happened all of a sudden at the Danish pastry house (see photo taken on a cell phone below). I was having lunch with another mom, Inna, (she is the one who took the photo). She met me with her baby daughter Abi. This is not the first time that William kissed me but it is certainly the one time I was not the only one to say that he kissed me. My friend saw the kiss and she took a photo of it! So I could not help adding this special moment to William's blog. Here it is...



Still a watcher and a smiler - William si accontenta ancora di guardare gli altri e di sorridere

Oggi mi sono trovata ad un'altro dei tanti raduni delle mamme ex studentesse che non lavorano e delle tate pagate bene dalle mamme che lavorano. Tutti a ritrovarsi con i bimbi della stessa eta' (9-10 mesi). Ancora una volta mi sono trovata con William tutto super felice di guardare gli altri bebe' che gli gattonavano intorno e che, a volte, cercavano di arrampicarsi su di lui. Lui sempre a guardare gli altri bimbi affascinato dalle loro acrobazie. Pure io li a guardarli affascinata e a sentire due mamme preoccupate sullo sviluppo dei propri figli. "Oh il mio cammina ridendo senza tenersi su bene e poi tutto ad un tratto si inciampa e cade giu' come un sacco di patate. Ohh, almeno il tuo cammina. Il mio niente. Gattona solo. Guarda che brava questa bimba. Si siede, si rialza, si mette a gattonare, si arrampica, ritorna a terra tutta da sola. Wow, complimenti! Si e' brava ma non cammina ancora." "Che coordinazione tua figlia! Guarda come gioca a tirare la palla. Si ma anche lei non cammina. Gattona solo." Continuai ad ascoltare questi racconti mentre aiutavo William a stare in piedi e a tenere un gioco in mano che gli altri bimbi cercavano di rubargli. Sara' perche' William e' calmo e razionale come suo papa'? Vedi video qui sotto.