My dad likes to tell two stories of when I was a baby:

• In the first, I was a difficult, colicky newborn who was "born with my mouth wide open and didn't stop screaming for eighteen months." I was a "tyrant in training," and if I didn't have things exactly how I wanted them, I "got revenge." For example, if I were not reclined at precisely 81.2 degrees and jiggled for 17 minutes after feeding, I would stare my dad in the eye and projectile vomit forcefully enough to hit a wall five or six feet away. What a hassle for my poor dad, amirite?
• In the second, my dad volunteered for all the night feelings because he's just that kind of stand-up guy. But I wouldn't cooperate. He'd go to all the trouble of preparing a bottle in the time before microwaves, and then I'd go ahead and fall asleep after taking a single ounce. And then I'd wake up an hour later and he'd have to go through the whole dance again! Now, at the time, people suggested letting babies cry it out at night, but not my dad! He devised a brilliant idea: attach the bottle nipple to a squeeze bottle so that whenever I started to fall asleep, he could squeeze the bottle and force more formula into me. Sure, I choked and sputtered at first, but eventually I would take the whole bottle at once. Miracle of miracles, I wouldn't wake up to bother him again until morning. And that, my friends, is how you get a month-old baby to sleep through the night!

As far as I know, it has never occurred to him that my screaming, vomiting, and generally unhappy baby attitude might have had something to do with being force-fed an entire half-day's food in a single go, every single day of those first 18 months.