When reading baby developmental guides, they often say that somewhere around the 6-month mark, babies start rolling over — from their tummies to their back and vice versa. With Kaia’s 6-month check-up coming this Friday, I was hoping that she’d roll over intentionally before that appointment… just so I could have the pride of saying, yes, my kid *is* rolling over by six months. She had rolled over a number of times from her back to her belly and vice versa in the last two weeks, but I wasn’t 100 percent sure if they were intentional movements or just accidents because they happened only a handful of times. Our nanny said that she was almost there last week, but not quite. She anticipated she’d be rolling over comfortably and repeatedly this week.

Well, today, my baby officially became a rolly poley. She rolled three times from her back to her stomach with the nanny, and after the nanny left for the day, she was rolling almost non-stop with me all evening. I lost count of the number of times she rolled from her back to her tummy. I couldn’t believe how proud I felt; I was like one of those annoying, gushy moms who squeals in delight at every little thing their child does. But hey, this isn’t a little thing for babies… Rolling over is considered a huge milestone because it means that the baby has been doing enough tummy time to build core strength, which then lends itself to performing movements like rolling over, sitting, and eventually crawling and walking.

Then, while I felt both pride and joy at seeing my baby doing this over and over, a part of me got a little sad. Why is she growing so freaking fast? I cannot believe she’s turning six months old this Friday. Time just flies by way too quickly. Before I know it, she will be crawling, then walking, and she won’t need me to carry her anymore. I just want to relish each second with her as my little baby.

When Chris’s parents had booked their trip to come visit us this summer, Chris suggested that it might be a good idea for us to look up well-rated infant formulas available in Australia for them to cart over to supplement the baby’s diet. Australian food regulations are just as strict as EU food regulation, so we knew the infant formula would be of much higher quality than the Similac and other mainstream American infant formula brands here. Plus, I wasn’t sure if/when my milk supply would start decreasing whenever my period would come back, so I wanted to be prepared. And well, I’d rather be prepared with Australian formula rather than American formula.

In Australia and the EU, corn syrup or high fructose corn syrup are pretty much unknown ingredients, and so they aren’t used as empty and cheap calories used to fatten up babies the way it is here. I also think that dairy in Australia is overall, just far higher quality than that in the U.S. because again, corn is not the main ingredient used to feed cows there — grass is, as that’s natural and normal for them to eat. In Australia, when you buy a carton of cow’s milk, it’s just assumed (and from my perspective, taken for granted) that the cow who produced that milk for you ate grass, not corn, and therefore, that milk tastes much different than the average cow milk here, which came from cows primarily eating grain/corn, unless otherwise stated.

I chose three brands for them to bring back: two of them are organic and one of them is a goat milk based formula, which Chris got excited about – I’m sure he wants his own bottle of that! The one we opened first was Bellamy’s Organic, which is the first certified organic infant formula in Australia, founded by a Tasmanian mother. It’s made with grass-fed cow milk from New Zealand, specifically A2 milk, which is supposed to be easier to digest for babies and more nutrient dense than A1 milk (I guess that’s regular milk….?). When Chris first opened the can and smelled it, he reveled at the scent and had me come over to get a whiff. As soon as I smelled it, I started giggling nonstop almost — I couldn’t believe how good it smelled! It had a scent that was reminiscent of a sweet Asian milk biscuit (no, there’s no sugar in this!!). It was so pleasing and nice to smell, unlike the formulas here. Bobbie has a pretty nondescript smell and isn’t offensive at all, but it doesn’t hold a candle in terms of “pleasantness” of scent like Bellamy’s.

It wasn’t even just the scent of the formula that got us: the way it mixed with water was so, so different. As soon as you add the formula powder to a bottle of room temperature water, it almost immediately dissolves. Then, when you shake it, almost no bubbles or foam appear; in fact, the color and the viscosity of the formula appears almost exactly like breast milk. When we put a bottle of the Bellamy’s next to a bottle of my breast milk, you almost couldn’t tell the difference between the two. That would NEVER be the case with any American formula, even Bobbie, which markets itself to be like European formula. Bobbie foams up like crazy, so I could spot the difference in Bobbie vs. breast milk from across a room.

Chris mixed the baby’s first ever bottle of Bellamy’s formula while we were out at lunch on Sunday, and she seemed to enjoy it. Her initial expression was one of “Hmmm, this is new. What is this?” And then, she seemed to lap it up and really relish each slurp. When Chris stopped halfway through her feed to burp her, I opened the bottle to take a smell again, she started yelping, as though to get mad that I might be taking her Bellamy’s milk from her!

“She might end up preferring Bellamy’s milk over your breast milk,” Chris said to me, tauntingly.

Uh-huh. Sure, she will….

I told our nanny that Chris said this, and she laughed and said, “Chris! Nothing is better than mommy’s booby milk! Nothing!!”

Since last Tuesday morning, I’ve had the most annoying kink in a back muscle on my right side. I have no idea what caused it. Chris thinks it’s because of the flatter pillows we slept on at the hotel, but who knows? Regardless, it’s been lingering for way longer than any muscle kink I’ve had ever had. Usually, they go away after a few days with some massage and nightly tiger balm application, but this time, nothing seems to help. I used the Theragun on me and had Chris use it on me a few times. He’s helped massage me and rub in tiger balm. While it feels good in the moment, I never seem to get back to normal after or the next day. It just feels the same. These are those odd little joys of getting older: having weird back cramps and kinks that have an unclear origin that just seem too stubborn to fade no matter what you do.

Last night, as Chris helped apply pressure on the spot with tiger balm, I thought of all the great reasons to have a life partner, and this was one of them. When you agree to spend the rest of your life with someone, you also agree to help them with these little life annoyances, like taking out muscle kinks, applying tiger balm to hard-to-reach areas of your body, buttoning up buttons on awkward spots behind your neck, sewing the holes in their shirts, soaking and swishing their blazers in a baking soda, vinegar, and tea tree oil + water solution to get out lingering stench. Because if you don’t have a partner to do this for you, who else will be there day in day out to help you?