Little Chub's Sleeping

Little Chub has been doing a great job of sleeping for the past few days. She's now spent an entire week sleeping by herself, and 5 of the 7 nights she slept through the night. (Well, not really, but the few times she woke up she resettled herself before we had to come in.) The last two nights, she's taken about 12 minutes or so to fall asleep, and I'm not sure if it's because I wasn't involved in her bedtime routine at all, or if it's because she hasn't been quite as pooped going to bed at 10pm as she is when she goes to bed at 11pm. But, we'd like to get her onto a regular sort of schedule, within reason, because right now her night-time sleep varies from 9 hrs to 11 hrs, and whenever she has a shorter night-time sleep, she is more tired the next day (duh!). She wakes up within a half hour of 8am on either side on any given day, and I'd like her to get at least 10 hrs of sleep every night, so my goal is to give her a bedtime around 9 or 9:30.

Anyway, I'm so proud of her! It's been so nice to actually get to sleep all night, even if the actual hours are less than they were before because Peter and I have spent the last week talking for a long time before we fall asleep, which we could never do before. Little Chub sleeps sounder, and resettles herself even when she does wake up, and she has been a much happier baby during the day (which I wasn't entirely sure was possible). We'll switch her out of our bedroom and into her own soon, and then we'll get to stop sleeping on our dumb pullout couch. But first I need to get a toddler bed guard because she falls off the bed like crazy. Then, the next step is gradually getting further and further away until she no longer needs our help to fall asleep. The goal is to be there before baby is born.

Little Chub is such a big girl now! She's also been mimicking the words we say like crazy recently (in the last few days), and her comprehension of what I'm saying amazes me sometimes. She picks up on words that I've never gone out of my way to use in context with her before, so we're trying to be extra pro-active with verbal things right now because she is a sponge.