Unsure about late afternoon cat nap

[SaraMamma]

Hello mums,

I have a 7wo DD who has been following the EASY routine since day 1.
I am finding hard to understand at this point how to "implement" the late cat nap...

She currently stays awake approx. 1 hour and sleeps 3x 1.5 hour plus the cat nap, which we're trying so far to have around 5:15pm to 6.

The thing is, I have a 2.5yo DS, so we eat around 6:30pm with him.
If DD does not really sleep or wakes up crying (as she does) at around 6pm (if not before), it's very hard for me to sit down with my DS and have dinner with him...

Also, if DD wakes up at 6pm but feeds around 6:30pm, she gets quite tired for her evening bath with daddy.
To be honest, she has good night sleep, with dream feed around 10:30pm and 1 wake-up around 3-4am, but I still struggle to organise that cat nap, especially given that I have a DS to manage as well.

Any advice/suggestions, please?

Thank you!

[Katet]

It's never the ideal when you have 2 children, it;s a real juggle & add in the fact that it's very normal to have an unsettled period which is often in the late afternoon evening "witching hours"  around 5-7pm have that name for a very real reason.

I think if someone had the magic solution, then they'd be super rich!

From a BTDT with a baby that wouldn't nap in the evening & a 2yo who needed feeding etc. I found that I had a few options.
1) wear the baby in a sling & he may or may not nap, but he didn't get as grizzly.
2) Shift the day later so the wake up time was later & the day naps were later & the "witching time" was later - didn't work.
3) shift the family routine & meal times around to not clash with a time when the baby was "witching" - which worked really well.  That was a real eye-opener to me that it was easier to "change the environment" rather than try & change the behaviour of one of my children.

The thing also is that EASY isn't about the clock times, but about not falling asleep while feeding, so if you are waking your baby earlier in the day to follow a clock  time based EASY, you may find that if you let the feed and sleep times be a bit less structured, you may find that she doesn't have the problems. I know with my DS2, I actually had a couple of Catnaps in the morning so that we could get out of the house & do things & then DS2 did a 2.5-3 hour sleep in the middle of the day when DS1 napped & then he did another 2-3 catnaps in the afternoon (the one around dinner time was always in the sling)