Bait-And-Switch

Wikipedia: "A bait-and-switch is a form of fraud in which the party putting forth the fraud lures in customers by advertising a product or service at a low price or with many features, then reveals to potential customers that the advertised good is not available at the original price or the list of assumed features is different."

Dani, the mark, has been climbing out of her crib in the night and into her baby sister's crib. We are delighted that Dani is so affectionate with the baby, but the behavior is clearly a problem and we need her to cut it out. Neither one of the girls fall asleep if they are in the same crib, and Dani has a penchant for being an over-lover as she enthusiastically hugs and snuggles which may harm the baby.

We've been trying to curb the crib creeping for months, but to no avail, so a few nights ago we tried a con.

We got both the girls ready for bed in the nursery and put the baby in her crib first.

Then we took the mark over to the baby's crib and told her to give her a kiss and say goodnight, thus dangling the bait in front of the mark.

Then we put the mark down in her own crib. While I told the mark in no uncertain terms that she was not to climb into the baby's crib under any circumstances, Jill The Shill secretly replaced the baby with a red cherry ball covered with a baby blanket.

We put the baby down in our room and waited to hear Dani climb into her sister's empty crib. We waited and waited. Twice, thinking we heard movement, we sprung into the nursery only to find Dani gazing at us from her own crib and perfectly behaved.

The mark never took the bait, and around 1am we eventually put the baby back in her crib so that Jill and I could go to sleep.

In the morning we found Dani in the baby's crib reading her a book.