The Baby Edit, volume 1: If

Jenny at Unremarkable Files has published a couple of (very funny) posts about babies writing poetry, which got me thinking... what if babies were allowed to edit classic literature?
Here, with apologies to Rudyard Kipling, is what they managed to come up with this week.

If you can keep your toy when all about you

Are losing theirs and blaming it on you;

If you can hurt yourself when all protect you,

And blame them for not saving blanky too;

If you can wail and not be tired by wailing,

Or being rocked to sleep, don't bat an eye,

Or being cradled, don't give in to cradling,

And make your mother weep and father sigh;

If you can sleep - but drive your parents dotty;

If you can pee - whilst perfecting your aim;

If you can meet with Weaning and The Potty

And treat these two impostors just the same;

If you can bear to hear the words you've mangled

Repeated, on some future wedding day;

Refuse the car seat, until you are wrangled

Protesting, writhing, howling all the way;

If you can make one heap of all your pasta

And throw it in one game of dinner-toss,

And lose it, and then beg for a replacement

And never let them think that they're the boss;

If you can force your unsuspecting siblings

To let you have their food when they have none,

And be the top of your domestic food chain

And scream as soon as Mama says "All gone!";

If you can feed non-stop from dusk to sunrise

And only doze off after the alarm,

If you can be in charge, although you're pint-size

And make sure that things never get too calm;

If you can fill the unforgiving minutes

With sixty seconds' worth of screaming done,

Yours is the room and everything that's in it,

And - which is more - you'll be a BABY, my son!