O! the naivete of a new parent! Was it just yesterday that I tempted the gods so foolishly by daring to speak of sleep? And even more foolishly, how much of it the small one got the night before? CARDINAL RULE OF BABY-BLOGGING: Never, ever, ever write out loud that your baby might be sleeping. Amalah wrote the book on that one.

As penitence for my foolhardy ways, our sweet little baby decided that while she would again go to sleep at 6 PM, she would wake up 3 hours later, never to sleep again until 1 AM? 2 AM? I’m not exactly sure. If she could play, she was more or less fine (although talkative), but if we tried to make her sleep… WOE!

In another shining example of how foolish only a day can make you look, the wise and wonderful Jess commented yesterday that maybe Emmie was going through a sleep regression (very worth a good Google). Ha! quoth I (for reasons I felt valid at the time). Emmie must have read this blawg because she then decided to remind who we were dealing with here.

The main gist of sleep regressions, if my reading comprehension still holds, is that babies go through these “development spurts” at predictable times (4 months, 9 months, etc.). Emmie is a little behind the curve here at 5.5 months (part of why I didn’t suspect a sleep regression), but still within the normal range. During these times, the baby is going “LEARN ALL THE THINGS!” and so doesn’t have time for silly things like sleep. Examples writers give are babies waking to push up on their hands and knees when learning to crawl, etc.

Last night, I realized just how right Jess was as I watched Emmie pushing, turning and twisting her body in her crib, coming thisclose to rolling over in pursuit of a toy just out of reach. She also really sat up for the first time yesterday, and sat quite solidly for several minutes before finally toppling over. She’s doing some great turn taking, with laughter, fake coughs and other funny things. She realized she can get my attention by smacking her lips together, then gives me the biggest smile when I look her way. She’s just been changing so much in the past few days that I think a development spurt is very likely the culprit at work here.

So we shall see what Morpheus has in store for us (PS Not a Matrix reference). At the moment, she appears to be sleeping for the night, but I’m not holding my breath any more!