irregular getting up times - how do I get a structure to the day?

[bethdivine]

DD is 6.5mo. She wakes at different times every day, e.g. today it was 5am for a feed, then wide awake by 5.30, so DH got up with her. Yesterday, woke at 6am, day before 7am. With such irregular timings I'm finding it really difficult to get any structure to the day - still, at nearly 7 months. Obviously she's ready for a nap at different times, depending on what time she's got up that morning, and as I also have DS 2.8yo, it really makes it difficult to plan ahead with anything and I feel like he's still just waiting around a lot of the time, for me to feed DD or help her sleep. - she's a pretty crap napper - still wants to feed to sleep and I feel like I should be helping her out a bit, but really don't know how to sort it out now. Is there anyway of helping the early morning thing so she starts waking at a more similar time every day? I don't care if it's 6am every day, as long as it's the same time. - She's not ready for a nap within e.g. 2.5 hours of waking, or it wouldn't be so bad, the length between naps also seems to vary.

any advice / suggestions most welcome.

hmm

I would be tempted to ignore dd's whims a little bit and get on with whatever DS would normally do
Remember many of her peers will have no choice but to go on the school / nursery run etc, and as long as she can/will sleep in the car or pushchair and you can feed her on the go she won;t suffer - in fact you may even find she naps better...

thanks mrs B, I've tried to just go with the flow on days where i go to my mum & dads (divorced so 2 visits in same day - luckily same village) and it's an absolute disaster, she never naps has total melt down and I have to then get in the car at that point. But that may be more to do with Mum & dad being over excited with her...
i suppose i'm kidding myself that if getting up times were more regular, the rest of the day would flow into a better pattern wishful thinking...

I find my 7 month DS gets up different times each day. But due to my nursery runs he has to have a nap when we get back around 9.30am and then another at 1.30pm. They seem to quickly get tired at the right time. I BF and put down awake sometimes he screams for 10mins mostly not at all.

Wishful thinking about set waking time my 3yr old will wake anytime between 6.15am and 8.30am even though put to bed the same time. You can decide a wake up time - wake them up or let them scream until the alloted time, thats what many Gina fans do .

Get no cry sleep solution book for help with naps.

I have similar probs with dd, also 6.5, only she's not such a problem when the PiLs visit - for her it's all about staying awake to play with ds (2.6). Luckily he still naps too and some days I can even get them to do it at the same time. But yesterday for eg. she just kept herself awake all day until she passed out for 20mins in the shopping trolley, then was un-put-downable all evening.

will continue to watch thread if you don't mind Beth. My irregular-waker is ds (Tuesday it was 8:10, Wednesday 5:45. Grrr....