Okay. I'm finally ready to announce it: Archer is sleeping through the night.
Only new parents can appreciate both the precious and precarious nature of sleep in the first year; something that simply cannot be forced, bargained for, or coerced in any way. You just have to dimly hope that some day, some sweet sweet day in the future, this devil child who fiendishly keeps you from uninterrupted sleep for longer than you once thought was healthy, natural or humanly possible, finally will give up the ghost and sleep all the way through the night.
And then, once he does, it is a trick.
It is a trick because babies are about the least consistent beings on the planet and even though he strings together three solid nights of sleep in a row and you dare to think, "Wow, my little treasure is finally sleeping through the...", something tiny but perceptible only to the child will shift in the universe and cause wakeful sleep for the next two weeks. Dark, spongey bags again swell under your eyes as the blissful sleep you'd brushed up against ever so lightly wanes and you fall into a fretful awareness that you may never again experience a day in which fatigue is not the underlying theme.
But then, a magical developmental milestone actually occurs, and just before his first birthday, he falls asleep at night and doesn't wake up until morning. And then he does it again. And again. Repeatedly. For real.
So I'm shouting it from the rooftops (blogtops?), jinxes be damned: "My kid is sleeping through the night!" The tyranny is over. For now.