Rolling with it

Daniel rolled from back to front today!

Now, this isn't the first time he's gotten from back to belly. On two other occasions he's flipped himself, and I would have counted that as rolling without his physical therapist's description of the difference. When a baby rolls back to front, he should draw his knees up, twisting at the waist first then twisting his torso and finally rolling the shoulders.

However, a baby with low muscle tone (like Daniel) might not engage the muscles like he ought to. What Daniel was doing before was arching his back WAY far (while laying sort of on his side) and craning his head around as if he were trying to look at the top of his own head. I wish I had a picture of him doing this, but I don't. Anyway, he would end up in sort of a C shape, with his belly way out. From there, a weight shift would cause his whole body to go over. So he ended up on his tummy, but without having used muscles to get there.

When I mentioned to his physical therapist that he had done that she quickly showed us some things to do to help him learn the right way to roll. From then on, anytime he started in on the arching, trying to get over, we would work with him on doing it right. And it worked! YAY! (Only once so far but still. I'm excited.)

He's also been smiling for the last couple weeks. It takes a little effort to get a smile out of him, and I haven't caught a really good one on camera yet, so this one will have to do for now.