Frequency of toddler crying in the night - is it normal?

[Sunflowerlily]

Hello,
first time parent here so often don’t know what’s normal and what’s not so wanted sone opinions. My 18 month old is an alright sleeper but she wakes fairly often crying. This will happen every night without fail and can range from 20-30 seconds (where she definitely seems to still be asleep) to a couple of minutes (where she might roll around a bit, normally looking for her cuddly toy and when she finds it she goes back to sleep) to longer (where she sits up and cries and then eventually goes back down). In the past I’ve gone in to settle her when it’s gone beyond 5 minutes but she often will get much more agitated if someone goes in and wont settle until she’s had over an hour of attention/cuddles/etc. if left, she goes back off herself.
i probably hear her crying in one of these ways 3-5 times a night.
is this typical? Should I be reacting differently?
she has a good nap and bedtime routine and she drops off to sleep with minimal fuss most of the time.
thoughts welcomed!

I have the exact same situation with my 18 month old! Exactly the same. If I go in when I can see he’s really struggling it often makes it worse.
It’s like rousing from his sleep annoys him so he lets out a few cries of frustration.
It’s difficult as he often goes back to sleep but it wakes me up so I never get continuous sleep.
I have no idea what causes it. A bit of everything I think. Teething, trapped wind/digestion, overstimulation from the day, he goes to nursery so probably even little bugs. Ultimately I think he’s just a loud child and likes to “signal” whatever the situation. I think he’s slightly on the sensitive side with everything he does and likes to make himself heard.

@Pizzaandsushi it’s reassuring to hear I’m not the only one!
my DD is also quite “vocal” so there’s another similarity.
i am starting to struggle with the lack of continuous sleep and the not knowing if it’s going to be a 10 second situation or if it’s a real problem!

@Sunflowerlily I feel exactly the same. We’ve tried EVERYTHING and nothing stops him being vocal. I can even turn the monitor off and shut our door and still hear him. It’s literally seconds but enough to disturb my sleep.
I’ve kind of accepted the fact until he can tell me if there’s an issue, I’m not going to sleep well and I go to bed early to try and make up for it but some nights I do dread the nighttime and stress how much I will be woken up. Will it be a few seconds cry or hours because I interfered and can’t get him back to sleep. The frustrating thing is, if I don’t go in when he’s really crying, he won’t stop until I go in!
It feels almost like newborn days again when you’d have no idea how often you would be woken, just that you’d know it was a lot.

@Pizzaandsushi lets just hope this is a phase that will pass as the communication side of things picks up.
I'm giving a night light a try at the moment, it doesn’t seem to have any notable difference but it hasn’t got worse either
good luck tonight and I hope you just get the short interruptions!!