Little EC has had her first bouts with fear the last couple of days. Last night, at a family get together, someone made a quick yelp because they were afraid of the dog. EC had a sympathetic response, and did a very short time screaming as a result.

Today, the Empirical Grandparents came to visit. My dad, who has a history of scaring other grandchildren through no fault of his own, scared EC for the first time today just by looking at her. It took about a half an hour to calm her down. I haven’t seen that kind of response from her ever. (For the record, she did fine with him the rest of the day.)And tonight, the third round. She was sleeping peacefully, and then suddenly woke with a yell, and was inconsolable for nearly an hour. I suspect she had a nightmare, and based on her recent experience, she knew how to respond to it. Perhaps her grandpa visited her in her dreams!

I laid little EC down yesterday on a mat on the floor to do tummy time. She’s not been the greatest fan of tummy time recently, because she loves to eat and eating makes for an uncomfortable compressed stomach. Yesterday she found a unique solution to her problem: she promptly rolled over onto her back, and laughed at me. I laughed right back…I didn’t expect it at all. She’s never shown any inclination to roll, not even from back to front, and I hear that front-to-back is harder.

We (read: I) of course tried immediately to duplicate the results, without success. It reminded me of the time, back in October, when she found her thumb and started sucking it…she promptly forgot what she had done and only now, about two months later, is she consciously bringing fist to mouth to suck and chew. Likewise, I’m guessing that the roll was just a fluke…she was in just the right position, and her random flailings happened to be just those required to flip. She doesn’t remember how to do it, and is probably only vaguely aware that she did it in the first place.

I will, naturally, continue to coach her.

I learned today that the technical definition of a baby “sleeping through the night” is midnight to five in the morning.

*Blank stare*

Ok, well little EC did something more like what I would consider sleeping through the night last night. 9 pm to 4 am. Granted, that’s a little jet-lagged, but given that she ate at 8 pm, and therefore went 8 hours between feedings, I was pretty impressed.

So, next time someone asks me if my baby is sleeping through the night…I’ll let them know that’s child’s play. A full night’s sleep—we’ve discovered it’s possible, and that’s the metric I’ll be tracking. Veteran parents will probably tell me that it’ll be awhile till we get there consistently. We’ll see.