You can't leave him hanging

Sometimes when you’re a father, you simply have to hold your hand up and concede that your 10-month-old has outsmarted you – particularly when he held his hand up first.

I’ve been teaching Jamie how to do high fives in recent days and he’s coming on well, even progressing to the stage of doing high tens in a café on Sunday afternoon.

However, four o’clock in the morning is not the optimum time to show off your new trick. Or so you might think.

Once again last night, he was up at around 2am, shouting the place down. Vanessa dealt with him and he was back down again about half an hour later.

However, as in previous nights for as long as I can now remember, he began to shout for a second time at 4am. Both Vanessa and I went in, administered teething granules, Bonjela (the baby one which hasn’t been banned) and Calpol before I gave him some water and attempted to put him back in his cot. But he wasn’t having that.

So I held him for a few more minutes hoping that he would drift back off. He began to smile manically at me. I tried to ignore him. He began to gurgle. I ignored him. He stuck his arm in the air, looking for me to lay some skin on him. Man.

I explained that I would give him one high five and no more. He smiled. I gave him a high five. He stuck his arm back in the air. I gave him two more and drew the line. I then tried to put him down. However, rather than immediately shriek and wriggle as has been the norm, he lay there motionless for a few seconds. Brilliant. For the first time in ages, I thought I was winning and sat down on the floor next to his cot ready to watch him go to sleep.

But as soon as I was comfortable, he began to move. He rolled a bit, grabbed hold of the side of the cot, pulled a bit, grunted a lot, pulled a bit more. And slowly but very determinedly, he began to rise – still in his sleeping bag. A few seconds later, he was standing.

As I wrote a couple of days ago, he has been doing this in his cot for a little while but I’d only previously seen him once he was on his feet – not actually going through the process of getting there. But here’s the thing.

Just as he reached his full height, his left arm came up, his hand opened and he smiled at me triumphantly, demanding a high five for his remarkable achievement.

A more responsible father might, at this point, have put him straight back down and told him to go to sleep. But, come on – what a trick. And what a cheeky finale. I loved it, couldn’t help but laugh and quickly surrendered – giving him a huge high five.

Two minutes later, he was out of his sleeping bag and in the spare bed with me. Five minutes after that, he was fast asleep until a little before 7am.

I might have caused even greater problems for Vanessa and myself tonight but, when all is said and done, you don’t leave your little boy hanging.