18 month old singing and chatting through the night!

[Devonlover]

Hello, can anyone offer any words of advice to help improve my 18 month old DS's sleep?

He's always been a pretty good sleeper - through the night at 7 months - and fairly constant in terms of waking time and so on. But over the past 4 weeks, he's been waking up about 2am, not upset or crying, but just very awake and alert. He basically sings and chats to himself for up to 2 hours before eventually dropping back to sleep again. Sometimes he'll cry a little bit but on the whole, he's just having a fun time by himself.

I know there are worse problems to have, but it does mean he's really groggy in the morning and clearly sleep deprived. It messes up his nap because he can't last until after lunch. He also seems to want to sleep longer in the day, but if I let him have a very long nap, this means the problem at night gets worse.

Any ideas? Does it simply mean he's not tired out enough? Or is it normal, just another phase...?!

Thanks for any advice.

[fififrog]

My hunch says "phase" - my DD sometimes does odd stuff these days, like experimenting with her shouting (thankfully not for 2 hours!) and she's 19 months. Lots of stuff going on developmentally right now, is there not?

[k2togm1]

It's the 18 months old sleep regression. Horrid.