This is for Leo... Happy birthday!!

and in case anyone is wondering... I used to do the cradle escaping thing when I was a baby, so yes, it IS possible. My mom still busts up laughing when she tells me about it.

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A - Ambush

Reeve had known from the start that quite frankly, any spawn of Yuffie would inevitably be more of a handful than humanly possible to imagine. After all, it only took five minutes in a room with his petite, excitable wife to deduct that as a child, it was a small wonder that she hadn't run everyone around her into the ground.

So when Yuffie gave birth to their first son, Reeve was prepared – he already expected the frogs in his briefcase, the snakes in his closet, the bees that he would open up the freezer to find frozen inside of a jar.

He was ready for his favorite ties and jackets to be morphed and cut up into a five-year-old's version of a superhero costume, and then to be demolished by encounters with mud-puddles.

Reeve had already anticipated that his work-place was no longer a safe-haven, and that at any given time, the quiet nature of the office could be broken by a screaming five-year-old launching himself out of the newest hiding place to attack his loving father.

What Reeve hadn't taken into consideration was that his adoring wife would team up with their son to ambush him at every given opportunity, throwing herself into their son's pranks with a marked enthusiasm that made Reeve wonder how Yuffie could be twenty-seven and still as youthful as forever.

B – Boy

"Eh," Reno muttered, scratching the back of his head with one hand as he stepped inside the open door of Reeve's office. "That's weird. I coulda sworn you told me your baby was a boy."

Reeve glanced up from his paperwork with a perplexed frown on his face. ".. We did have a boy. What're you talking about?"

Lips quirked into a puzzled expression, Reno pointed over his shoulder with one wayward thumb. Reeve stood, following his line of sight. He found Yuffie, who had been stopped in the middle of her path to his office by several people who were now cooing over the adorable baby in her arms.

The adorable baby boy.

The adorable baby boy who was wearing a frilly dress and a bonnet.

He was at her side in an instant. "Yuffie…" Innocuous dark eyes rose up to meet his, batting their eyelashes innocently. "Why is our son dressed like… that?"

"Oh, I just wondered what it would look like if we had had a girl instead."

C – Chalk

What two-year-old didn't take kindly to chalk? It was an amazing object. You could draw on almost anything with it, there were multiple colors, and even better yet, you could chew on it!

So when Reeve came home from another long day at work to see his two-year-old son with a different colored stick of chalk in each hand, furiously scratching at the walls with it, he wasn't surprised – kids would be kids, after all, and no wall in the house was safe once Yuffie had given birth.

What did make him shake his head lovingly was his petite wife, right next to their son, with four sticks of chalk in her hands, scribbling away with a marked enthusiasm right along with him.

D - Dodge

By his third year of being a father, Reeve was growing quite adept at dodging things – whether it had been spoons when their son was an infant, or whether it was a hard nerf ball chucked at the back of his head.

What Reeve had learned not to dodge was his son himself. Sometimes, Reeve would turn his back, only to hear a squeal and whirl around to find 35 pounds of three-year-old-boy hurling itself at his neck. The first time Reeve caught his son, it was somewhat clumsy, and he had been terrified that he might drop him.

After the third time, Reeve had it down smoothly enough that he could turn the page of a book, move to reach his arms out and catch the human-rocket, and then go back to reading from the same line he had been on.

What really threw Reeve through a loop was when Yuffie picked up their son's habit of rocket-launching herself at him from behind. In all honesty, the man found himself quite grateful that he had married such a small woman, or the process of catching her so that she wouldn't fly into the desk behind him might've been a little more painful on his part.

E - Escape

It wasn't until the third time that they left their son in the cradle and went to prepare food in the kitchen, only to hear a loud thump echo throughout the house and rush into their infant son's bedroom to see that he had miraculously escaped from his high-walled cradle, that they installed a camera in his bedroom.

Reeve couldn't figure out for the life of him how the six-month-old baby boy had managed to escape from the cradle. Yuffie suggested, smiling toothily, that perhaps her latent ninja skills had passed onto their baby and now he was a prodigy to be reckoned with.

But the camera explained it all.

The fourth time they left the room, they played the camera back and watched in amazement as the baby would cling onto the side of the cradle, pulling itself up into a standing position. Then, the infant would lean forward so that its head tipped over the side of the cradle's wall….

…just enough so that he could put his weight forward and flip over the edge of the cradle, falling smack dab onto his head on the floor below, successfully escaping the cradle that had entrapped him.

"I told ya!" Yuffie exclaimed; "he's a genius ninja baby!"

Reeve wondered if this could possibly cause brain damage from the impact to the skull.

F – First-Aid

Reeve was thankful for many things.

One of them was first-aid kits.

Another was that due to Yuffie's perpetual state of accident-proneness, he was very adept at first-aid. So when their son came crying to him with skinned knees after falling off a bike, or sliced his finger open using a real knife for the first time, the child was very confident that Reeve could fix any cut and make it better.

Their son figured it was because Reeve was his dad, and that gave him almighty power of cut fix-ness and first-aid.

Reeve never felt it impertinent to inform his son that the reason he was so good at first-aid of any kind was because no matter whatever injury their son managed to come up with, Yuffie had already accomplished that feat years ago.

He preferred to let his son see him instead as the almighty dad of first-aid.

G - Galeanthropy

Yuffie and Reeve still remember one of the most shocking moments in the raising of their son.

It was when the six-year-old boy frowned thoughtfully at his mother, who was curled up with seven cats, purring back at them with a marked enthusiasm, that the child remarked evenly, "Dad, I think Mom suffers from galeanthropy."

Reeve, who had been typing away at the computer in the room, felt his hands freeze over the keys. Yuffie's eyes bugged out at such a large word.

"Galea…uh…whatty? What in the heck is that?"

"Galeanthropy. The self delusion that one is a cat," the brown-eyed dark-haired boy replied easily.

Yuffie's widened eyes had moved across the room to meet Reeve's astonished expression, and that was when they had both realized that their son had already begun to take after his nerdy father at such a young age.

H – Hammock

There were a few times, when their son was still in infancy, that Reeve would return home from a long day in the office to find Yuffie snuggled up in the hammock he had hung up out back, having rocked both herself and the baby to sleep.

Those were some of the many moments where Reeve was very thankful for his wife's petite frame; it made it that much easier to pick her up – and the infant in her arms – and settle himself in the hammock for a good family snuggle.

Because no matter how many years went by, Reeve would never get bored of the way Yuffie would burrow her face into his chest, proceeding to drool a small puddle on whatever shirt he was wearing.

Besides, Reeve loved to hold their baby too.

I – Impulse

Reeve came to remember how impulsive a two-year-old boy could be. Sometimes, their son would do ridiculous things without thinking, on pure impulse, sheer curiosity at what the consequences would be.

A good example of this was when the family was driving down the highway on the way home from a vacation, and their son, in the backseat with the window rolled down, took off his favorite hat.

Honestly, Yuffie couldn't remember where they had picked the hat up at, but it seemed to stick to their son like glue, and he couldn't go anywhere without it. It seemed to be what might be a two-year-old girl's equivalent of a baby blanket.

So when Yuffie turned around in her seat to see their son dangling his hat dangerously close to the open window, where the wind fluttered at it, she warned, "If you throw that out the window, we aren't stopping to get it back. So don't do it!"

Reeve watched through the review mirror as their son thought about it for a minute before releasing the hat and watching as it was whipped away in the wind.

Only a few seconds passed by before their son began to wail, realizing the consequences of his impulsive action a little belatedly, and Yuffie put her hands over her face, shaking her head.

Two days later, their son was horribly excited to witness the mysterious reappearance of his hat in his bedroom; when Yuffie eyed Reeve skeptically, the man shrugged. He didn't feel like explaining that he had grown used to picking up after Yuffie's impulsive actions over the years, and that sending Cait Sith to retrieve their son's favorite hat had been nothing out of the ordinary.

J – Jewelry

Reeve Tuesti was a genius at the creation and usage of machines, which had been emphasized in robots like Cait Sith. Upon becoming a father, the man learned that the role required much more repair-work than simple machines.

Sometime before he had married Yuffie, the first real present he had gotten her was a thin, plain golden necklace with such small links in it that it appeared to be one line. Because Yuffie would never be someone to wear flashy jewelry, Reeve had figured that the ninja would appreciate something delicate but simple.

After all, who had ever seen Yuffie the great Wutain ninja wear jewelry?

Nobody had, until Reeve gave her that necklace, and then the girl was never seen without it.

That's why when their son, who had just reached his one-year mark, was sitting in her lap one day and tugged on the shiny necklace, breaking the chain links in it, that Reeve learned it was also his duty as a father and a husband to learn how to repair jewelry.

Sure, they could have taken it to a store to get it fixed, but the watery look in Yuffie's eyes that signified she might be close to bursting out into tears at any given moment made Reeve promise that he could fix it right then.

After that, the list of things he needed to repair grew far beyond jewelry, because after all – between Yuffie and his son, everything was going to get broken at least once.

K – Keep

One habit that their son developed in his first stages of talking, when he could only say a total of three words, was to point to something he really liked and state, triumphantly, "Keep."

Reeve and Yuffie had deducted that anything their son deemed worthy to point to and say, "Keep" was extremely important and unexplainably precious to the small child, and that they would induce the wailing wrath of a very distressed baby should they dare to take it away.

So when Yuffie was out one day and Reeve had been left alone with their son, he watched as the child's dark eyes examined him before saying, "Papa."

Reeve had been about to nod in agreement when the child's chubby finger had landed itself right in front of Reeve's nose, gesturing to the man, and the small, insistent voice added, "Keep."

It was then that Reeve discovered that no matter how old a man got, it was still possible to find oneself dangerously close to tears.

L – Labor

Reeve was entirely sure that he would never forget the horror he experienced when Yuffie had been in labor while she was in the process of giving birth to their son. He had always been quite concerned, due to her small, petite frame, that it might be too much for her.

What he remembered most vividly was Yuffie having contractions, screaming at him that this was entirely his fault and that he was never going to put certain things in certain places again, and that once she was off of this hospital bed, that he had better start running for his life.

And then after the labor, when their son had been placed in Yuffie's arms for the first time, Reeve remembered the soft, tender look on her face. His wife had looked up at him and stated lovingly, "I want another one."

Reeve had wondered if she was insane, and if she had already somehow forgotten that she had been threatening to rip off his extremities while in labor earlier. At least, until he got to hold their son in his arms for the first time. Then, he stopped wondering.

M – Memories

Yuffie kept a steady stream of photographs as their son grew up. Though she cackled and professed that she would use them as blackmail once the boy was old enough to understand what blackmail was, Reeve had a feeling that the sentimental side of Yuffie which rarely showed was just making up good excuses to keep so many visual memories of their first child.

Although, Reeve had to admit, there was no doubt in his mind that Yuffie really would use some of those photographs for blackmail.