waking up

No matter what time we want them to wake kids will get up when they are ready, which is usually either way too early or way too late.

If you go to bed late they will wake up an hour before you want to, and they will make you late on a pretty regular basis. It is just something you need to learn to deal with. My son for instance has an internal clock of about 7 am, he rarely sleeps later unless he is snuggled in bed by me then maybe I can get 7:30 or an occasional 8. And of course there are the middle of the night screams and wet beds but those are so random that you can't really have a plan of attack for those moments.

What I started doing is to make sure I try to go to sleep very shortly after he does at night if I don't have a ton of stuff to clean up, at least this way I know I can get 8 hours of sleep. As far as getting up late, well I try to be prepared for that. If I know we are going somewhere the next morning, I get all of his clothes ready, and diaper bag packed the night before. Thanks to the internet i can usually have a pretty good idea on the weather so I can plan ahead for changes.

No matter what you do you need to expect the unexpected as much as possible, early up, late up, middle of the night up, you will probably experience them all.