And the award goes to....

I layed JT down in his bed the other night and left the door to the bathroom open a bit to let some light into the room. He proceeded to warm his spot up by rubbing his face into the sheet and shaking his head back and forth a little bit. While he was busy warming the sheet I backed out of the room, to the right of his crib. The door to the bathroom is on his left. I stood there for a second and watched him squirm around in a complete circle and upon reaching his starting point he realized he was alone. He let his head fall straight down into the mattress and let out a wail like you would not believe. You'd think he just stuck a fork in his eye. The scream was enough to drain the blood from my upper body and make me lean into the door for support. He carried that scream like an opera singer and suddenly looked to his left and stopped. Not a peep. It was like someone pulled the plug. He looked around for a couple seconds and without any hesitation threw his head back down into the mattress with another award winning yell. Again with the intensity. And sure enough, after a few seconds of hollering he turned to the left and immediately stopped. That bugger was looking to see if I was coming out of the bathroom! He repeated this stunt about 5 times and it was getting progressively funnier as it went on. I finally went in and sat on the bed to watch the show. He continued to scream bloody murder and then stop when he checked out the door. Once he was satisfied that that particular scream didn't bring me running he tried again. He finally broke character and saw me watching him. Not a tear in his eye folks...not a one. He lifted himself up and flashed me a gummy grin (plus one tooth) worthy of an Emmy. It's a shame that we don't have to teach our kids manipulation, it's pre-programmed. Sort of like Microsoft.