Congrats on getting your first girl up and running!
I know exactly what you mean about the writing being tedious at times, you just stare at the screen and words fail to appear!
With the <<if>> statements moving around, there's a few things that you can do, ending a line with \ means the game won't count it as a line break, also if you put the <</if>> at the start of the next section, it can help cover this up.
examples
<<if $thing is 1>>Tig ol' bitties!<</if>>\
<<if $thing is 2>>Jiggly booties!<</if>>
<<if $thing is 1>>Tig ol' bitties!
<</if>><<if $thing is 2>>Jiggly booties!<</if>>
Both of these should look the same and keep the text from moving around