>We had a really fun weekend, chock full of new milestones! Jack started eating solid foods on Friday night. He was a little skeptical at first but by Sunday night he was very enthusiastic.

Jack also was able to roll back to front and then front to back. Again, not witnessed by me, but very exciting news. The rolling to his stomach and then yelling was getting old. He is such a big boy.

Other than that, my weekend was too fun, and nothing embarrassing happened, so there isn’t much to report. BUT, we had our neighbors over for dinner, and we decided we needed to build a corn hole set, ric-rac some corn hole bags, maybe fill the bags with locally grown organic corn, make some corn hole accessories, and play a lot of corn hole, so that should provide a lot of material. Stay tuned.

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Jack is five months old tomorrow, and I am happy, so happy, ecstatic really, to announce that we are finally on a schedule.

As anyone with a new baby knows, getting on a schedule is like summiting Mount Everest. There is planning, training, Sherpas, oxygen tanks, permits, trips to Tibet, guides, altitude sickness, a high risk of death. Ok, it’s not really like summiting Mount Everest at all, it’s much more challenging.

And the worst part is that the schedule is so fragile. Just the slightest imbalance can send the whole thing into a tailspin and it may take weeks to recover. Like taking a nap too late in the day, falling asleep in the car, or something like baby’s first camping trip.

See this is our schedule: On Wednesdays we do laundry and on Fridays we shop for groceries. There, I said it. Other new moms, try not to be jealous of our awesome schedule. But we are leaving for a camping trip on Thursday so I guess I need to shop tomorrow for the groceries for the camping trip? But do I plan menus all the way through to the following Friday? Or just shop again when we get back? And then again next Friday? Do you see what I mean here? Don’t even get me started on the laundry situation.

Oh, did you think I was referring to a nap and night time sleeping schedule? Oh, no. No no no no no no no. Have you ever heard of K2? It’s like Mount Everest except it’s a little shorter and the weather is worse, and fewer people have summited and more people have died on it. So I guess it’s sort of like getting a baby to sleep through the night. Except not really. Although, attempts on Mount Everest and K2 are made in the spring, so maybe we’ll be summiting our own little mountain soon.

>I saved almost everything we had from Luke’s babyhood, confident it would soon get used again. Five years later, everything is back in use except the three things we donated to charity:

1.) The Baby Swing
2.) What to Expect When You Are Expecting
3.) What to Expect In The First Year

The swing was a hand me down and we didn’t have a box for it, and it’s sort of a hard thing to store without a box. We figured, hey, we may never need this thing and if we do, people are practically giving them away all the time, so we’ll just get another one. Well, I did buy another one that I found on Craigslist and it is the cleanest, fanciest, nicest swing I have ever seen, but it doesn’t work so we are forced to pretend we are a pioneer family and swing it by hand.

What to Expect When You are Expecting was easier to live without because I think the sole purpose of that book is to make sure you are worried about something during every moment of your pregnancy, and I can handle that all on my own, thanks.

That leads us to What To Expect in the First Year. With Luke, I dutifully read the chapter about Month 1 right after Luke was born and then I probably read Month 2 right away, just to plan ahead. I was very aware of every milestone and when it was supposed to happen. I remember some mildly stressful months when he insisted on not learning how to stack blocks. But he did “focus on a raisin” waaaaaay ahead of schedule.

But it is nice that the week-long vigil of Waiting for Jack to Roll Over started with us noticing that it looked like he might roll over soon and ended with him rolling over, with no book involved at all. Luke said, “If I am not the first person to see Jack roll over I am going to be SO MAD!” So I was excited for him when he ran to get me, yelling, “Jack rolled over!” I ran in* and sat down on the floor with Luke and Jack while Luke told me all about it. I saw Jack roll over the second time out of the corner of my eye while I was reaching for my camera. I caught the third event on film, which is good because he hasn’t done it since. And now the moment you have all been waiting for: (apologies again for the poor video quality. I’ll figure this out, I hope.)

http://video.google.com/googleplayer.swf?docId=8612996707942795171&hl=en

It’s just so nice not to be obsessed with milestones this time. Well, maybe just a little:

(* Dave was with Luke and Jack when Jack rolled over. As I read this I imagined myself in the other room eating bonbons and reading gossip magazines while my infant son almost rolled down a flight of stairs. What I was actually doing was getting ready to go on a date with Dave for the first time in 6 months. But the children were supervised.)

>Jack rolled over! Details and video to follow later.