Our Non-Sleeping Beauty

Our dear 2 1/2 year old daughter....having some sleep issues. Since she was 8 months old and we had our 2 episodes of "crying it out", she has been the best sleeper. We do the same routine and she goes down for the count like clockwork. Granted, when she wakes up-it is GO, GO, GO immediately. But I have thoroughly enjoyed the 2-3 hour naps and her bedtime of 7:30 p.m. to 6 a.m. Glorious....until now.
About 2 months ago, she started getting up in the middle of the night and coming into our room and just standing there at the side of my bed. First time this happened, I rolled over and jumped 2 feet in the air seeing this red afro munchkin staring at me at 2 in the morning.
I hop up, put her back to bed, and found her getting up again a little bit later. Most of the time, I got her back in her bed without an issue. A couple of times, I must've thrown her in bed with us (which I hate!)-not even realizing it in my bleary state of mind at 4 a.m. We tried many a thing....her sleeping on the floor next to our bed, the supernanny thing of no eye contact, no naptime during the day, withholding TV (no Monkey George!), etc. Nothing works.
I would say the last 3 weeks have been progressively getting worse. I finally counted on Thursday night-she got up 13 times from 2 to 6! She was tired, we were exhausted...it was rough!
So we brought out the baby gate (which she has crawled over not too long ago in another failed attempt) and had another big talk about being a "big girl" and sleeping in her bed, calling out for Mommy or Daddy if she needed us, etc. Up went the gate in the doorway and she was not happy! The first night, she only got up about 5 times (progress!) Last night (2nd night) she slept the entire night! We were thrilled! Only this morning, she was up and ready to go at 5 a.m. So we tried to tell her that Mommy and Daddy were still sleeping until 6 a.m. (or when the sun came out). Then the funnies began... She started yelling "Mmmuahmmmmmeeeee" and "Duuuuuhadddeeeee" (who knew there were so many syllables in Mommy and Daddy?) You would've thought the sky was falling based on her verbage. When that didn't get the results she wanted, she started with "I's stuck in here! I's stuck in here!" "Mmmuahmmmmmeeeee! Duuuuuhadddeeeee! I'S STUCK IN HERE!" Needless to say, there was no waiting until 6 a.m. to get up (was it too much to ask?!?). But we counted our blessings that she finally slept through the night again. We'll take one night at a time, hoping our good little sleeper is still in that cute redhead somewhere.