Toddler waking extra early?
Ladies, I need your input! My DD is 20 months old and in the last two weeks, she has started waking up at 5:45 a.m. EVERY morning. She won't go back to sleep and any attempt to lay her back down in her crib is met with a screaming fit. She's up, she's awake and she's ready to start the day!
Background: she goes to bed around 7:30p every night and before two weeks ago, she'd sleep until 6:30-7a each morning. Then, all of a sudden, BAM, we're up with the chickens. She has room-darkening curtains in her room (it faces east) so I don't think it's the light that's waking her up. I've tried to keep her up a little later but #1, she gets really fussy because she's tired, and #2, she still wakes up at the same time.
Thoughts? Is this just a phase or should I plan to be up with the sun every morning from here on out? 
Re: Toddler waking extra early?
Maggie has gone through phases of early wake ups. However she is mostly content to play in her crib for a set period of time - anywhere from 30-45 min. I also agree that changing bedtimes to later has never resulted in sleeping later for us. For a long time 6:30AM was normal wake up time for us, which didn't bother me so much since that is when I have to get up for work and then we had a newborn so I was pretty much on a 24 hr schedule again. By the time Molly was on a better schedule Maggie had gone back to sleeping until 7-7:30.
Are you trying to get her to sleep more because you are worried she isn't sleeping enough or would you just like her to occupy herself for a little while so that you don't have to get up so early? If it is the latter could she have a small toy in her crib or something that hangs on the crib to play with?
DS started getting up 1-1.5 hours earlier than normal back when he was 20-21 months old and it hasn't let up yet. I do know that they need less sleep as they age, so maybe that's part of it? If it's a phase, then it's a long one, b/c it has been 6ish months now.
We're also going through the same thing...we tried moving his bedtime from 7 to 7:30 p.m., but that didn't help at all. He used to sleep until 7 am, but lately he's up between 5:45 and 6:00.
Putting a book or small toy in his crib has been buying us about 45 mintues more in the morning. He's pretty funny, because I'll go in, hand him a book and he'll wave goodbye to me...I think he enjoys his morning "alone" time.
It must be contagious
. DS is STILL waking way earlier. Ask Moxie did have a post on this very issue the other day which sort of made me feel better that he might outgrow it (and that it's not likely something I'm doing wrong):
https://www.askmoxie.org/2010/06/qthereisnoa-stopping-early-waking.html
I'm trying to get to bed earlier,but it is so hard to stop doing what needs to be done at night.