Sleep Deprivation

I think I need to start a group for parents whose kids wake up at the crack of dawn. Owen has always been a morning kid. Until he was 6 months old, I would snuggle him in to bed with me when he woke up until Maya got up but, as we all know, that's not really a great habit. Then we 'cried it out' and once he was sleeping 10ish hours our rule became, if he woke up before 6:15 he had to stay in his bed til then. It worked okay, but I was often up listening to him talk to himself (he wakes up happy). Once we transitioned to one nap about two months ago he started sleeping until somewhere between 6:30 and 7:30. I thought I hit the jackpot...until 11 days ago. In the past 11 days he has woken up before 6 a.m.on 9 of those! Yikes! A few mornings I have just left him. This morning he happily talked to himself for an entire hour! I suppose in his defense he just cut 4 teeth and has had a minor cold during those 11 days. Sometimes if he starts to cry after the talking he will go right to sleep and sometimes not. This morning at 5:50a.m. I was wondering where the reset button on Owen is. When I tell people about it, I often hear "My kids can't do that because I'm not a morning person." or "Why do you let him get up?" I laugh because obviously I do not want to be up at 5:50 a.m.! I also assume those people have never had an early riser. Trust me, in the past 15 months of the early wake up, I have wondered how to alter his pattern. In the end, I think he's just hard wired. I do admit it was a bit of a shock after Maya. She was always on the longer end of sleeping (i.e. if normal sleeping was from 12-15 hours during a 24 hours period for her age, she would sleep 16 hours). I read all sorts of sleep books when he was 5 and 6 months old while trying to get him in to a more rested sleep pattern (he was taking 3 naps and waking up 2-4 times a night). In the end, he goes down so easily both for his nap and for bed (a 5 minute routine and putting him down awake...he does all the going to sleep without crying himself). He rarely wakes during the night and if he does we only have to go in maybe once every 2 or 3 months. He sleeps about 10-10.5 hours a night and takes a 2-3 hour nap in the afternoon and he's a pretty happy guy. Maybe I just need to paint a nice smiley face on my clock so I am distracted by that and not the fact that the first number I'm reading is a 5.