Hibiscus post-bud

A couple of days ago, I Blipped an Hibiscus bud before it had actually got to full bud stage - more like an empty bud casing. Due to a couple of logistical and personal issues which arose - the explanations for which have echoes of "The dog ate my homework" - I missed the next two or three intervening stages of the flower's journey to full flowerdom. I next caught up with it right in the middle of the petals-bursting-out-of-bud-casing-but-not-yet-in-full-bloom mode.
Or so I thought. Looking back at the previous day's garden pix, I noticed that I had actually managed to snap another of those intervening stages, and then promptly forgot about it.
It's the stage immediately before the one featured today, and can be found in the Extra photos section. I believe its technical name is "petals-about-to-start-bursting-out-of-bud-casing".
I believe there's only a single day between the two stages, so those petals are moving relatively quickly. In fact, if you've got too much time on your hands, plus the patience of a saint, you can sometimes actually see the petals moving with your own eyes.
Now I really haven't got THAT much time on my hands, and my allocation of patience is miserly to the point of unsaintly, but I've had just enough experience observing this growth pattern to say with reasonable certainty that it's quite a bit different from watching the hands on a mechanical clock face move around the dial. Or watching paint dry, for that matter.
You see, the petals don't seem to move at more or less the same (albeit slow) pace, like the hands on the clock do. Rather, they seem to stay  absolutely still for minutes on end, before suddenly having a noticeable and very fast growth spurt - possibly gaining two or three millimetres in length - before coming to an abrupt halt and having another absolutely still rest period; and so on. 
This staccato growth theory isn't solely based on my observations of Hibiscus buds - it's also based on observations of the growth cycles of other types of buds and flowers - including the passionfruit bud/flower in yesterday's Blip.
I'm fully aware that this all might sound a little unlikely, or illusory, or - let's drop the niceties - delusional. And I have absolutely no evidence to back up my observations - not even any circumstantial evidence, such as urban legends or botanical anecdotes - so such skepticism is perfectly understandable.
However, maybe you want to satisfy yourself that the theory either holds (where I'm like the 19th century amateur gentleman scientist), or doesn't (where I'm full of common garden fertiliser), you could get out and start observing the growth patterns of buds and flowers in your own garden.
But before you do, you should clearly understand that some amongst us who have perhaps sailed past the skepticism stage and are now firmly anchored towards the cynicism end of the harbour might well consider you to have too much time on your hands, and your level of patience to be approaching that of a saint.
Just saying.