bedtime creeping to 8:30p to 9p

my evenings are now gone... the twins used to go to bed closer to 7p to 7:30p... lately its been 8:30p and close to 9p. that eats into my evening!

anyway, they wake close to 7a. And nap 1-3p (ish).

do I need to start cutting their nap? and/or taking it away altogether??

I have been trying to have a good nighttime routine.
(bath, potty, PJs, snack, book, brush teeth, potty, prayers, bed)

some nights they really fight going to sleep, like last night - UGH!
But tonight they went down really easy, but it was still 8:45p.

the twins are 28 months, and typically have always required more sleep than the average, but now I'm not getting my 12 hrs at night and yet they are about falling asleep at 1p if they don't go for a nap.

any suggestions?? thanks so much. shelley

 

If you are not ready to cut out their naps completely, you might try just cutting the naps down to only an hour. I know that no one likes to wake a sleeping baby, but I have had this strategy work for me with a couple of my kids who still needed to nap but weren't going to bed easily.

 

I posted a similar thread a couple weeks ago because I'm in the same position - oh and currently it involves DD screaming her head off until 9pm after we put them in bed, but they both refuse to go to bed earlier... typically they've been falling asleep at 9pm lately and waking up at 7am too.

I'd try to make their nap a bit earlier if you can... I know a lot of people said to wake them up after 1.5 hour (mine sleep up to 3 hours) but my kids get very crabby when I do (and I enjoy the quiet too much). You could try skipping their nap but they'll probably have to go to bed very early then, so yeah I'd wake them up after one hour in your case or you can wait until they start napping less and less on their own (I'm doing this for now but giving it a couple weeks and if nothing changes and she still screams at bedtime I'll have to wake them up at 2pm).

 

Mine have a very similar schedule. If they do not nap(which happens about once/week) they are in bed by 7pm , if they nap we still put them to bed around 8pm but they sit a talk to eachother for over an hour before they fall asleep.

I guess if you are happy with the later bedtime and it's working for you then keep with the nap and just accept that they will go to bed later, if you want an earlier bedtime maybe cut out the nap or shorten it by half and that might encourage an earlier bedtime. Hope this helps.....

 

It sounds like they might not need quite as much sleep now that they're getting older. You can trim an hour of sleep somewhere out of the mix--either shorten their nap, wake them up an hour earlier or let them go to bed an hour later. In the last year, we've moved to an 8pm bedtime (they fall asleep by 8:30), they wake up around 6:30 am and they nap from 1-2:30.

 

THis is what we did....as naps pushed later (and bedtime later) we made naps one 1/2 hour. Start at noon done at 1:30...immediately upon waking we did a fun activity or snack. That always made my crabby waker happy. Really---the bedtime was too important for me and was worth dealing with crabby kids for 20 minutes post nap (one napped for a year longer than another). Bedtime inched back to 7/7:30 and we slowly phased out nap for rest time. They still go the bed at 7/7:30 and wake at 6/7 with a one hours rest.

It will get difficult if one drops naps altogether and the other doesnt, then you could be dealing with two different bedtimes!

 

For us it all kind of evens out and we don't mess with naps. They are in their cribs at 7:30 regardless and will sometimes stay up talking for up to an hour or sometimes fall asleep within minutes. Either way, they are not getting out and it doesn't seem to affect their wake-up time. If they stay up a little later they do usually nap better the next day but I really just don't concern myself with it - once they are in bed my time begins whether they are sleeping or not!

 

thanks for the responses ladies! I think I'm going to try cutting their nap to 1.5 hrs and maybe less... hopefully we'll see some earlier bedtimes or at least less cranky bedtimes soon! but its so hard like pp said, I enjoy the quiet time... like now... we went to a bday party and they fell asleep on the ride home... and are sleeping... but its 4:30p... and I'm messing up my evening now! ah well. Monday is a new day!