sleep regression?

i feel like i've heard it's normal for two year olds' sleep habits to regress.  is that true or is that google just backing up whatever i type into it?  and they say it happens when a kid is 27 months old.  which baby girl will be in ten days.

anyways, her actual sleep is just the same, it's just that she's not as enthusiastic about it as she was before.  like after lunch she'll ask to play or watch thomas or somehing and i'll tell her she can do all those things after nap.  this used to work just fine but now she'll say "all done nap" which has to make me laugh because then i always tell her that she hasn't started napping yet and she's most definitely not all done.  but then she goes down alright... even if she's not lunging for the crib.

night time is worse though.  at night she wants nothing to do with chris... everything is "i want mommy hold you", "i want mommy read it", and "i want mommy do it" and on and on.  and tonight she even ran away from chris and hid behind my legs after i told her that daddy would read stories with her in her chair.  tonight was the worst yet. so i put her to bed again.  and we were doing great reading stories and even when we went over to her crib to pray.  but after we said amen, instead of lunging into her crib like she used to, she started whimpering and whining and trying to squirm to stay in my arms and not be put in the crib.  i put her in anyways and told her to lay down so i could give her her sippy and put her blanket on her.  this is the first night that SHE WOULDN"T LAY DOWN!  what?!  i didn't want to completely abandon her though so i worked with her for a minute or two to try to find a book she'd like that she could keep in the crib with her.  she wasn't liking any of my options and eventually i just put in a spot book (spot the dog, not actual spots) because all her pooh bear, thomas, and peter rabbit books were downstairs.  she wasn't happy about it but i knew she had her blanket, she was fed, she had a book, she had a sippy, and really she was set with everything... just stalling.  so i went over our "everybody naps" routine that we use for situations like this "elmo sleeps, mommy sleeps, daddy sleeps, thomas sleeps, lucy sleeps, everybody sleeps, everybody naps, and now abigail is going to nap too."  didn't really work.  as soon as i walked out she started crying.  loud.  and kept it up for 4 or 5 minutes.  and then it stopped.  and then all i could hear for the next twenty minutes was her sweet singing so she obviously wasn't very distraught.

but what is that?!  why does she suddenly prefer me SO STRONGLY (she's always preferred me for bedtime... i think it's a mom thing... and preferred chris for playtime) and panic when we put her in her crib.  she even told me repeatedly before she brushed her teeth that she wanted to nap on her closet floor.  it's all super weird and bizarre and i just wish i knew what the problem was.  kinda because i feel bad for baby girl but kinda because i fear for myself that this problem will get worse instead of better.

so the things i've come up with as possible reasons are:
1. honey has been traveling and busy with work lately... especially this week (this will continue for the next six weeks at least)
2. two year molars (i haven't felt anything yet but if it follows the pattern of her other teeth, the worst pain happens before they actually break through)
3. colder weather and nightfall happening earlier (we stay inside now between nap and bedtime because it's dark outside whereas before we used to take a walk to the park or play on the driveway for a while)
4. developmental changes that come with getting older and becoming more aware (maybe she's learning to be afraid of the dark or experiencing separation anxiety or just preferences in general... or even learning manipulation)
5. my life was too easy before so this just happened to be a fun thing to throw at me (just kidding... this is not a big deal for me, but it does give me angst to think that baby girl could be fearful and dreading naps/bedtime... because that would just suck for her.

sooo, i need help.  is this here to stay?  is this just a passing phase that will be long forgotten in two weeks time?  i want things to be as pleasant as possible for her since we're leading up to a lot of change with having a new baby.  her world is going to be rocked in three months so i want her to feel more confident and comfortable these days, not like she's losing her footing.  does that even make sense?

i know i'm only two years into it but motherhood has been super easy for me so far.  partly because my kid is one of the easiest kids ever, but partly because i had so many years of practice with other people's kids.  nighttime sleep though is something that i have less experience with than most other things so i'm not quite so confident in this area.

advice and words of comfort would be especially appreciated right about now...  poor baby girl.

*nothing else about her sleep has changed though.  she still sleeps through the night/takes a full length nap, wakes up happy, and plays for a while before she calls me to come get her.  the only thing that's different is the actual putting her in her crib part.