Sonny the sniper

We've blogged about how seven-week-old Sonny can seem, relatively speaking, the fittest person in our family. Now the first signs are emerging that he may become a great marksman or free-throw specialist.

At the moment, he's just a sweet-faced pest, the way he's beating us silly in Wrong-place Spitting. That's the game that automatically starts once we place Sonny on any surface (bed or mattress, say) and - to keep saliva or regurgitated milk from discolouring it - position his head on an old face towel.

Without fail, Sonny will then contrive to dirty up the surface anyway. Perhaps he'll cunningly move his head to get just the right angle, then produce a great big dribble of goo. Or he'll roll himself slightly, or even push aside the face towel aside with his chin, before triumphantly choking up some milky deposit. It's disconcerting: Try as we might, the little ace always finds an opening. Oh, he'll stay still if we're watching him closely, with only an adorable gurgle now and then. But once our heads are turned, he moves and takes his shot. The only spot he never nails, of course, is the face towel intended for that purpose. It stays pristine, unless we grab it to wipe our sweaty brows.

Anyway, we're not giving up: Visit our modest home, and you'd see pieces of cloth, strategically-placed, littering whichever surface Sonny's presently occupying. But his continuing accuracy does remind us that all the planning in the world isn't enough to guarantee success. Fairly trivial, when it's a matter of leaving splotches on sofas and so on. Rather more serious if we're talking about parents who plan out their children's futures years ahead.

Of course, were we more superstitious folk, it's possible we could see his infant marksmanship as a cosmic sign that Sonny will prove remarkably adept at scoring the right goals in life, whether academic, career-wise or romantically. We wouldn't know, since we never did put much store in reading tea leaves.

Though tea might not stain half as bad as Sonny's milky goo.