can I fix my early risers?

[aekamenitzer]

Starting the week of August 14th, my then 13 month old twin boys decided they only wanted to take one nap a day.  So now that we've successfully made it through that transition, they are still waking up too early to make it through the morning.  A typical day is them waking around 7 am.  I don't go in to get them until 8, which they don't seem to mind, they keep each other entertained until then.  If we go anywhere, they usually fall asleep in the car on the way home.  If we stay home, they usually have a meltdown between 10 and 11.  I feed them lunch at noon.  Sometimes they fall asleep during the meal.  I will let them sleep for no more than 10 minutes.  Then they go down at 1 and sleep until 4.  The evenings are fine, eat at 6:15, bath at 7:30, bed at 8.  Is there a way I can "train" them to sleep until 8 am?  Or should I feed them lunch earlier and put them down at noon?  Please help.

[kim&savannah]

I don't know that you can do much about their wake-up time, and especially since they are getting 14 hours a day and not waking up at an obscene hour (my dd at that age was often awake and yelling for us before 6 a.m.), I don't think I would mess with it too much.

If you want to try to make the mornings a little smoother, you might try putting them down for a nap a little earlier--I would move it back 15 min. at a time--nothing drastic so you can see what happens, but not disrupt their routine drastically all at once.  6 hours awake is probably a little long for them at that age, so maybe if the nap was right in the middle of their day, it might make things a little easier and still not affect bedtime too much either.

Good luck! 

~Kim

[* Paula *]

Our DS wakes at around 6:30 in the morning, and has also transitioned to 1 nap.

He has his lunch at around 11:30 and is fast alseep by 12 - Unfortunately we can only get him to sleep for an hour and 45 minutes, maximum 2 hours if we are lucky - He will never sleep any longer 

He goes to bed at 6:30 in the evenings and sleeps right through until morning.

[aekamenitzer]

Thank you both for your responses.  I'm thinking that I will get them up at 7:30, give them lunch at 11 and put them down at noon and see what happens.  If that doesn't work, I'll be back asking for more advise. 

Amy

[* Paula *]

Good Luck!

Keep us posted on how you get on.

Paula x