I have been trying to keep her up longer with not much luck
If you need to establish a new routine you may need to also be quite strict about timings. In the BW books Tracy was really quite strict on times when putting a LO onto a suitable routine, it can be hard work and it doesn't mean LO sleeps well right away but the point is to get them into a suitable routine where they then do have the chance of sleeping much better. Once on a suitable routine the flexibility returns to the EASY routine so that a LO who is more tired one day due to greater stimulation etc can be put down earlier etc.
LOs are not always happy to have their routine changed.
I've been watching the clock and I notice that at 2hrs awake time almost to the minute she starts showing sleepy signs like rubbing her eyes and getting grumpy. Is this out of habit or is it possible she can only handle this much A time?
Well, there are some babies who are very high sleep needs and so would need longer naps and shorter A times or longer nights etc but I don't think you have mentioned that your baby is higher sleep needs so I would assume these sleepy signals are due to:
- habit, LOs get used to be ing put down after a certain amount of time so they show signs of readiness
- boredom, needs a change in activity
- is tired because the naps are short and LO is not getting a restorative sleep, if this is the case the answer really is to increase the A time to get the longer nap and then LO won't be so tired.
She also seems unhappy when she wakes up. Today again she only slept for 30-40 mins for her "big" nap which should be over an hour. When she woke up I went down and she was rubbing her eyes and scratching her head and seemed frustrated.
This sounds like she was either UT for the nap and needed a bit longer A (or higher stimulation) to get her tired enough to sleep longer OR she is unable to transition between sleep cycles for some other reason such as teething pain, too hot/cold, wet nappy or other discomfort, has forgotten that she is supposed to sleep longer and needs reminding.
Have you managed to resolve the EW and routine due to the clock change yet?