Sleepless Nights

We have an adorable little girl. She's clever and generally well-behaved and smiles lots and is a total joy to be with (most of the time - I mean, Aliza's still a baby after all and babies do tend to have their "meltdown moments"). Except at the moment, she's not sleeping through the night. The typical pattern is:

- Get her ready for bed. Try putting her down there and then. This typically results in a "waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah!" there and then.

- Keep her in her gro-bag (kind of like a sleeping bag for babies), but take her out of the cot and sit her in the bouncer in the living room 'til she drops off (typically this takes 15-20 minutes). She gets the "bedtime" message, she just won't fall asleep without mummy and/or daddy in the room as well.

- Pop her back in the cot when we go to bed.

- "Waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah!" usually re-occurs a couple of hours later, if that.

- Try to get her to go back to sleep in the cot, fail.

- Pick her up out of the cot, and either cuddle her in the living room 'til she falls asleep again, in which case, back in cot, rinse, repeat.

- Or more likely just give up and bring her in to bed with mummy and daddy, where often she'll drop right off and sleep 'til morning.

- Except lately she's been waking up at stupid o'clock anyway and fussing.

Alexis informs me that this is because she's "working on developing skills", in this case, probably crawling. Apparently when she nails what she's thinking about, sleeping through the night will return. Which is fantastic, because we'll be able to sleep at night (again), but not so fantastic because we'll have a mobile baby and to be honest it's bad enough removing items from her reach (she grabs anything that isn't nailed down, and pretty much anything that is, too). Baby-proofing our flat is going to be a nightmare.

Yaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaawn.