This past week, Little Miss Sunshine (formerlly known as the Wee One) slept through the night three nights out of four. By “through the night,” I mean we put her in bed at 6:30, and she stayed asleep until 5:30 the next morning, when she woke up refreshed and cheerful. Those nights, I got EIGHT HOURS OF SLEEP, which is kind of a miracle. I felt like I could fly, maybe, if you asked really nicely.

I even wrote a blog post about how we’ve turned a corner, she’s growing up, my nights are my own again.

But. Before I could post it…she learned to pull herself up to standing.

And now, when she stirs little bit in the night and approaches consciousness, instead of going back to sleep, her little baby brain thinks, “I CAN STAND UP.”

So she does.

Then, once she is up there, her little baby brain thinks, “I DO NOT KNOW HOW TO GET DOWN.”

So she cries. LOUDLY. With maximum distress.

And so, napping has been a little tough lately. Sleeping through the night? Just a distant memory. It’s times like this that I remember what my friend Izabela always said about her little boy, that she was always amazed at how you have to teach them everything, that there is absolutely no a priori knowledge in there. We’ll be making “learning to SIT DOWN” a high priority around here.

Also a new priority…learning to walk. Up until now, she’s been a happy crawler, but suddenly that’s not good enough. I’m spending a lot of time now as a human walker, humped over a tiny little girl as she slowly, slowly, walks around. She’s good with her left foot but her right foot drags a little, so the other day I said to Sir Monkeypants that she reminded me of House. That started a disagreement over which one of us is her Wilson, and which one is Cuddy. You’d think it would be obvious, but yesterday Gal Smiley asked Sir Monkeypants why his chest is bigger than Mommy’s, so there is some question.

Anyway, getting our little walker to go into the playpen these days is a bit of a challenge, especially when she’s working on a reduced I CAN STAND sleep schedule.

On the plus side, though, the Little Miss is in this adorable phase where she is absolutely fascinated by bucketfuls of stuff. Any stuff will do, as long as it’s in a bucket. I’ve always kept an assortment of small toys in her playpen and recently she’s become bored with them, so she fusses when I have to pop her in. Solution? I got an ice cream bucket (empty, we’re not quite feeding her ice cream yet, that’s next week), and put it in the playpen too. Now when I put her in there, I just grab a random handful of toys that were already in there, pop them in the bucket, and say, “Oh look! What’s in your bucket today?”

Suddenly, everything old is new again. Stuff! In a bucket! SO COOL.

Second only to the immense appeal of unravelling the entire roll of toilet paper in the bathroom. Ten months old is a very busy time.