What a pretty girl!
Assumpta came to us at about age 2, and was instant lap-kitty with me, though she took longer to warm up to my husband (which is a little odd, as she MUCH prefers men to women overall, and for some reason, she hated everyone in sight, but zeroed in on me as "her" person). Five years later, HE is the prefered lap provider (he has longer legs, so he puts his feet up on the coffee table and Assumpta dangles her legs like she's lying on a branch). But when Assumpta's sick or upset, she curls up around my neck with her nose planted squarely in the base of my throat for hours at a time.
We also work at home, and so were pretty flexible in the amount of time we could spend with her. The first couple of times Assumpta explored my husband's lap, I made him stay still until *she* decided it was time to get down. I had a friend in college who constantly complained that her cat "didn't do" laps, but every time I was there, the cat tried to get up in her lap and only got to stay there a few minutes because my friend was a perpetual motion machine and couldn't stop moving. :? To this day, I credit the cat with teaching my husband to sit and stay. :lol:
I have one friend (a total cat magnet) who took in a stray (he has four, all former strays that just showed up on his farm) that didn't know *how* to get up on a lap. He'd put his front paws on your thighs, dig his claws in, and pull himself up via brute force. He's since learned that he can jump up just as easily, but we all had claw marks in our legs for a while. :roll:
All you can really do is wait patiently for the cat to completely take over your home...

With Assumpta, it helped to let HER decide the lap terms; if she jumped up in my husband's lap and he patted her, she'd immediately hop back off, whereas if he waited for her to jump up and take her time exploring, she'd eventually decide that she wanted a pat and come to him. She's just one of those cats that *hates* it when people come to her, she'd much rather decide the terms herself. The most important thing with Assumpta was making an atmosphere conducive to laps (quiet TV, no loud voices or music) and letting her take the lead.