Unfortunately I have Limp Bizkit stuck in my head, coz all that baby’s doing is rollin’, rollin’, rollin’, rollin’, come on!

I guess there are worse earworms – Vanilla Ice’s ‘Rolling in my 5.0’ popped into my head yesterday, which is an indication both of my age and how crap my taste in music was circa 1990. But Proud Mary (‘Rollin’, rollin’, rollin’ on the river’) would be far better. Hell, I’d even accept the theme from Rawhide, but I’m stuck with Nu-metal. When she starts crawlin’ I’m going to get lumbered with Linkin Park, and Pantera when she starts to walk, but hey ho, that’s the penalty for a youth misspent in rock clubs.

Anyway, what started as something to be celebrated (‘Wow, she rolled over, how crazy cool!’) has become something awkward and life-changing. Because Izzie doesn’t gently roll over onto her belly, hang out there a moment, and then roll back, oh no. Instead she rolls at speed over and over and over again, and for some reason, she can only go to her left.

You put her on the floor beside the sofa, and five complete rolls take her to the sideboard, where she starts to cry because she can’t go any further. So you turn her around, and five rolls later she bumps into the sofa, and starts to cry because she can’t go any further, so you turn her round again, and so on, and so forth. Two hours later, dizzy and knackered, she asks for a feed, has a brief kip, and gets right back to the rolling.

It was funny, at first. But gradually it dawns on you that your life has just developed a mess of practical problems because that stationary bundle of joy is now mobile.

Before she discovered she could move, Izzie was perfectly happy bouncing in her Jumparoo or lying her on her play mat, so we could get on with things, provided we were in the room and kept an eye on her. Now, we have to keep an eye on her, and that’s all we can do. She stays on the play mat about a minute and then decides she’d rather be the other side of the room, so ‘Wheeee!’ – she’s off. She couldn’t care less about the Jumparoo because she can’t move around in it. So the time available to do chores has shrunk dramatically.

Then comes the hoovering. Because she’s off the mat and all over the floor, the carpet has to be spotless. With a dog in autumn and a massive old oak tree in the garden, it’s impossible to keep the leaves, mud, twigs and other random detritus outside – you open the door and half a forest blows in. Which means you have to vacuum twice a day.

And putting her to bed has become a nightmare. The moment you put her on her back in the cot, she rolls and faceplants against the wooden slats, and cries because she’s stuck, so you move her onto her back further from the edge, and watch her roll onto her stomach and then cry because she’s stuck again. You hold her in your arms and rock her to sleep, put her gently down on her back, leave the room, and ten minutes later she’s crying again because she’s rolled onto her stomach and can’t roll back the other way. And always to the left.

It’s spread to other areas, too. If I’m lying in bed with Izzie having tummy time on my belly, one of my favourite morning routines, she tries to throw herself off and onto the floor. In her Bumbo chair that we use with solids, she leans to the left and tries to roll the whole thing over on top of her. I just want to tell her to stop trying to grow up so fast, to enjoy being a baby – I mean, she’s not even five months old yet – but she smiles at me, leans her head to the left and over she rolls.

Roll on when she can roll to the right!