When parenting is like a horror movie

With any horror movie, much of the suspense and tension lies in how we absolutely know that the vampire/ serial killer/ monster will strike again - without knowing exactly when.

That's pretty much the state we find ourselves in, in relation to Sonny's powers of flipping.

Flipping, you say? No, we weren't thinking barbecues and burgers, or speedily buying and selling shares for quick profits. Rather, at round about the two-month mark, our young 'un has acquired enough arm and thigh power to go from lying on his stomach to facing the ceiling. Perhaps 10 days ago, he performed this flip while on a mattress on a floor - as witnessed by his unhappy parents. Unhappy, because we instantly realised that the spare bed that we've been using as a convenient changing station had suddenly become a springboard to danger: Sonny might flip himself right out and on to the floor.

The thing is, he hasn't repeated the performance. Oh, we've seen him do the same sort of warm-ups that he went through before his successful flip: His arms flail and legs bash at the floor, as though he's in a hurry to get someplace. This display is accompanied by strange yips and the laboured breathing of a weekend squash player. Yet the climactic turn-over has not been reached since.

So we're back to using the bed as a changing station. We tell ourselves that Sonny's flailing and leg-bashing should cue us to any danger (this parallels the creepy music that always plays before the movie monster pounces). Yet what happens if Sonny turns out to have a sense of taut pacing and love of shock that outstrip our wariness?

By now, convenience be damned, we just wish Sonny would go ahead and get it over with. Just flip a time or two, and Mum and Pa can find some other changing station, or figure out some other solution.

The suspense is killing us.