Penny nursed before we put her to bed last night, but she was too sleepy to cap it off with a bottle. So we put her down a little before 9, and I said to Matt, "Well, she'll be up again by eleven."

At 1:20 I woke to the sound of... nothing. Sleeping baby. Sleeping husband. I went back to sleep, myself.

Matt got up around 2, to make sure she was still breathing. She was.

I woke up again at about 3. Still quiet. Maybe she'll go to four again, I thought. That would be nice.

Matt got up again at 4, and went into the nursery to make sure she hadn't been stolen by gypsies. She hadn't.

At 4:30, I woke up. Penny was still silent. Matt's breathing sounded loud in the pre-dawn stillness. I got up to go to the bathroom, then tiptoed into the nursery to make sure aliens weren't performing bizarre experiments on her under cover of a high-tech sound barrier. They weren't.

I went back to bed, but couldn't go back to sleep. My brain had started pondering things, and it didn't want to settle down.

Matt roused a bit at quarter past five. He checked his watch. "How about that?" he said.

"I know," I whispered. "She is going to be the Hungriest, Angriest Baby Ever when she wakes up."

"Yep," he agreed. He went back to sleep.

At 5:30, she had started making squirmy-grunty noises. I wasn't going to get back to sleep anyway, so I decided to get up. Maybe if I picked her up before she got fussy, I could get her to eat before she got too furiously angry.

That, astonishingly, worked. She ate, then went back to sleep until Matt changed her into day clothes.

(Of course, about thirty seconds before it was time to put her in the carseat, she started screaming, but that's another story.)

Another long sleep. The sleeper she's worn for the past couple of nights is beginning to acquire some magical significance for me. I'm almost afraid to try putting her in another outfit.

Maybe, if she's finally ready to start sleeping through the night, Matt and I will eventually learn how to sleep through, again, ourselves.

Waaah. My camera's estimated delivery date got pushed forward to tomorrow. Which, since I'm having it delivered to the office, means Monday. Pooh. I'd been hoping to play with it some this weekend, especially since my brother's wife finally got to town earlier this week and they're coming over Saturday.

Ah, well. I'll have it soon.

--Liz