Go to sleep!

Now that Emma has mastered the skill of sitting herself up from a lying position, there's no stopping her. Literally. I don't know if she'll ever be happy lying down again. For the last two nights, she will NOT go to sleep. All she wants to do is to sit up and play! Here's how the nights have gone:

8:00-8:30: Offer Emma a bottle, spend quiet time in her room, put her in the crib
8:31, 8:32, 8:33, 8:34...and so on: Emma sits herself up in the crib, we try to lie her back down
9:00: Resort to rocking Emma to sleep and place her in the crib
9:15: Emma is asleep in her crib, Andrew and I are washing dishes, doing laundry, or watching TV...finally
9:18: "Andrew, what was that?!"
9:19: Go check on Emma only to find her sitting up playing with the mobile or soother or whatever
9:20: Repeat rocking to sleep, over and over, as many times as necessary, until about 10:30-11:00, add in lots of crying because Emma is now severely overtired!!! (And so are we!)

*Sigh* Hopefully once the new sitting up behavior gets old, Emma will relearn that her crib is for sleeping. Even though bedtime has become really frustrating, I know it's just a phase. And although we wish she'd just go to sleep (!), it's hard not to laugh when we go back in Emma's room and find her sitting up playing in the dark. She's pretty cute. And she has that impish look in her eye that says, "I know I'm supposed to be sleeping, but look what I did!"

Anyway, I can only imagine what it'll be like when she learns how to crawl--coming very soon, I think--and how to pull herself up on the crib rails. Holy cow!