I have a particularly bad case of cute aggression. I always have. It surprises people, because it doesn’t fit with the rest of my personality at all, but not only do I suffer from cute aggression in the presence of any small animal, large animal, or baby, but I suffer from it unduly. Like, once everyone else has exclaimed over the cute creature and moved on to adult conversation and cocktails, I am still staring, googly-eyed, at the cute creature, and finding excuses to meander over to it and smush it against my face some more. I don’t really understand how everyone else isn’t like this. I don’t understand how people can be simply indifferent to the presence of something small and adorable and cuddly. I cannot leave it alone. I had a wee fuzzy rabbit for like ten years, and I never left her alone for a minute the whole damn time. And she actively resisted cuddling, and in fact, was pretty bitey! But I still managed to put the tips of her ears into my mouth several times a day.
Of course, I also do not understand how some people can be indifferent to the presence of, say, a dessert buffet, so it’s possible that I simply have immature tastes and poor self-control.
Either way, Edith gets smooshed and squeezed and kissed and cuddled from one end of the day to the other. I clench my teeth so hard at her adorableness that I’m afraid I’m going to chip one. Unlike Thomasina (my rabbit), however, Edith prefers these lavish attentions. Ideally, she would prefer that I never put her down, and that our faces were permanently welded together. But one day, she will not want this, and I will have to begin to respect her personal autonomy and then I don’t know what I’ll do.
Probably eat a lot of cake.
Accismus 
I wonder if you would like Adam Levin’s Bubblegum, which has a lot of cute aggression (like um really aggressive aggression) in it. Also he’s compared to DFW a lot. It’s also possible that the book would be a real turn-off for you, as it goes very very dark. Maybe not quite Gravity’s Rainbow dark, but certainly dark.
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I did not find Gravity’s Rainbow especially dark. I haven’t read anything by Levin, but I’ve always meant to. But if it has anything bad happening to babies or kids, I have to wait a few years; I find I can’t handle any of that at all right now.
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Ah, I was thinking of the coprophilia and other stuff pertaining to the Nazis and their kids as fairly dark, and I thought I recalled that GR wasn’t your cup of tea. I don’t recall many bad things happening to kids directly in Bubblegum. The cute aggression is aimed at other cute creatures (not of our real world). The Instructions is also good, but I don’t think it’s as good a book as Bubblegum. Bad stuff happens to tweens and teens in that one, but it’s of the schoolyard violence type (well, the sort of violence we had in my day, when shootings hadn’t become a thing yet) and is generally sort of fantastical.
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Yeah, it wasn’t my cup of tea, but not because I found it too dark; I more just found it a slog to read, although I feel like I SHOULD have liked it better and might revisit it at some point. I don’t actually remember much about it at this point, although the coprophilia bit certainly does stick in one’s mind.
The Instructions is the one that everyone says to read, so that’s good to know, maybe I’ll check out Bubblegum first instead.
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If it’s useful at all and you don’t care about spoilers, you could skim posts tagged “Bubblegum” at my old group read site, which I resurrected last year to read and discuss the book with others. Jeff’s posts there are incisive as always. Mine tend to focus on weird little things and more abstract things. Paul’s are largely summary and stand the biggest chance of giving outright spoilers. This post catalogues in bullets at the top the various types of suffering in the book. That bit is mostly vague enough that spoilers aren’t likely super spoilery; the post does include some significant spoilers once you get past the bullets.
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You will be delighted to know that children age out of their desire to have you constantly touch them (mostly) in tandem with aging out of being so damn adorable. There are a couple of years where you’re chasing after them like, “don’t you want a hug???!?!” but after that you’re okay again. You will love your older child but you will not find her smushily adorable.
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I had no idea cute aggression was a thing, and now I know why I am constantly threatening to devour my dog, and attack her belly with kisses several times a day.
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OMG I am not the only one who grits her teeth at sweet fluffy cutie things! Yay for the “Ooh a kitten hope I don’t crack a tooth” club?
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Nothing cuter than a kitten (other than my baby)!!!
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