Infant Cunning

You know, it's phenomenal just how quickly a baby develops that most human of characteristics.

Guile.

Lauren has certainly started exercising HERS, that's for sure. She has a pathological hatred for having her nappy changed, so she launches into her own little spoiling tactics as soon as she goes onto the change mat.

Her tactics are quite impressive. If she kept her legs locked straight out, we could pretty easily whip off the jumpsuit and change the poo-stained pamper. If she curled her legs up into a ball, it would be similarly futile. But she's a bright one, our daughter...

Her trick is to strategically ALTERNATE between the two poses. When we're trying to unhook her feet from the jumpsuit, she will make sure that whichever leg we are working on will be completely outstretched. Of course, when we're trying to get the nappy on over her arse, her legs are tucked in, just to make our task that little bit harder.

If she wasn't so damn cute, it'd be enough to piss me off. But how can you get mad at a face like that?

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The last few nights have been rather "interesting".

From Wednesday night, we have been trying to add a few bottle-feeds to Lauren's breast-feeding regime, with mixed success. The first night we tried it, she was happy enough to guzzle down the milk from the bottle, but she flatly refused to settle long enough for me to put her down. Come about 3am, she had wolfed through all of the expressed milk, and she was still screaming for more.

Of course, the second I woke the missus up, she settled straight down. Mary gave her a quick gulp, and the baby promptly dropped off to sleep. Six hours of my efforts were shaded by about fifteen minutes of hers.

Obviously, I needed to regroup and reconsider my tactics.

After giving it some thought, I realised that when she was feeding directly from the tit, there was an extended period of skin-to-skin contact. I was always wearing a shirt when I bottle-fed her, so I hypothesised that perhaps that was what was stopping her from being soothed and settled.

F-it. It was worth a TRY.

So, come Thursday night, I made sure that each time she wanted a feed, I would lose my shirt and see if she was any calmer.

And wouldn't you f-ing know it- it actually WORKED. She'd sleep for a few hours, then she'd stir and I'd plug a teat into her mouth, when she was done I'd burp her and cradle her for a while and she'd be dead to the world. When I put her down, she'd sleep soundly for another few hours.

SUCCESS!

I approached Friday night with a new confidence. A half an hour or so after the wife toddled off for a nap, Lauren started squawking away and I went to work.

Four f-ing HOURS later, I was STILL trying to get her to settle down. She had swigged down THREE full bottles in that time, she had burped more than if I had been giving her piss-warm Pepsi, and she still wasn't happy. After reaching my wit's end, I decided to call for backup and woke up the wife. Of course, she had her sleeping in a matter of minutes.

By this stage, I was starting to take it f-ing PERSONALLY. I'll remember this in seventeen years, when she's begging me for the use of the car. That'll f-ing teach her.

You better f-ing BELIEVE that Daddy will hold his grudges. Oh yes indeedy.

Anyhow, I figured it was just some sort of comfort thing. After having a couple of weeks of being latched onto the hooter every few hours, I assumed that she was just a little more familiar with her mother. That'd make sense.

Today, however, was a different story. Mary spent hours trying to get her down, and Lauren just wouldn't go to sleep. I wandered in, and after picking her up and cradling her for a few minutes, she was in the land of nod.

It was almost as though she kicked back and thought to herself, "Hmmmm. I wonder how long it would take me to completely destroy BOTH of their minds?"

Nah. COULDN'T be.

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My laptop may very well be the first casualty of her little "War on Slumber". After a couple of hours of trying to get her to sleep last night, my throat was parched and I needed a drink of water. Of course, I was holding her in one arm, so I was a little hamstrung.

My water was sitting on a rather low coffee table, and while I managed to pick it up and staiate my thirst with no problems, just as I went to put it down Lauren stirred. I thought I was about to drop her, and in my effort to ensure her safety, the water went flying all over the table.

My laptop was obviously ON the table.

As quickly as I could, I put her down as unplugged everything. Unfortunately, I got there a little late. As it stands at the moment, my "Tab", "Caps Lock", left-hand-side "Shift", and "Escape" keys refuse to work, and my "a" and "q" keys only work occasionally.

That's when the f-ing thing actually decides to boot up in the first place. At a guess, I actually get something happening maybe one out of every five times I hit the power button. F-ing laptops.

Obviously, the keyboard is well and truly f-ed. I've tried cleaning it, but that hasn't made a lick of difference, so at the very least I'm looking at the cost of a new keyboard. The boot problem suggests that the mainboard is well on it's way toward completely frying, so things aren't looking good. Given the cost of decent laptops these days (and more accurately, the staggering cost of laptop PARTS), there isn't much point trying to fix it up. I'm probably going to just replace the bloody thing, and keep my eye out for cheap second hand parts in order to get this one up and running again.

Trust me- you have NO idea how frustrating it is to have half of your keyboard dead. If you see a few more typos than usual, you'll understand WHY.

Dell seems to be running a few decent specials at the moment, so I might end up giving them a shot. We'll see.