The Big Roll

You can do it!

Never thought I'd say it, but sometimes I feel like Bela Karolyi, the famously mustachioed Romanian-turned-American women's gymnastics head coach.  As Milo hangs out on his little mat thingy with the dangling animals, lurching his way towards turning over from his back to his stomach -- a more difficult move by far than the belly-to-back roll that he's already mastered -- I find myself clapping and saying wildly encouraging things that he probably can't understand but seems to respond to with happy little groans of effort.

Actually, Milo's attempts to gain momentum for The Big Roll also remind me a bit of The Metamorphosis, with its notoriously grotesque and heartbreaking first line: "When Gregor Samsa woke up one morning from unsettling dreams, he found himself changed in his bed into a monstrous vermin."  If you've ever watched a beetle try its darndest to get its torque on, there is a sort of tortured futility to it.  Milo, however, seems to know he can do it, and hasn't been particularly frustrated by his epic failure.  No, just kidding.  I still kind of assume he's ahead of the game if turning over is, as our doctor explained when Milo turned over for the first time at his two-month check-up, a four-month landmark.  The kid is obviously going to be a world-renowned athlete of some sort.  But no pressure.  As long as he doesn't, one day, inexplicably turn into a cockroach, I think we'll be plenty pleased.