Why is your 3 year old charging in at 5:30? Put a book or a toy in his bead and tell him not to get out until someone gets him. We have a 2 1\2 yr old still in a crib and a 5 yr old. The 5 yr old will not (even to use the restroom unfortunately) get out of bed until we get him.

I assume it's payback for you picking the name.

compromise:

everytime you let her sleep in, you get a BJ (not necessarily from her either)

The point is, you should have been doing this for her when he wasn't sleeping through the night, and allowing her to have at least one morning to sleep in. Apparently, though, you didn't.

Now that he sleeps all night, her expecting you to get up is not reasonable, but you didn't take care of her in an important way when she needed you to, and her little remarks and comments are the fallout now. It's not really fair for her to do this, but little resentments like these linger, and her resentment is at least partly justified.

I suggest that you arrange to take one Saturday night off, and give her a fulll weekend of no kid-responsibility whatsoever. Let her sleep late and when she gets up ship her off to a day spa (or a baseball game, or shopping...whatever she likes best and doesn't have time for anymore). Tell her you appreciate all her months of sleep deprivation. The thing about women is that we can hold small grudges virtually indefinitely if we feel like they never get recognized by our men, but a little honest appreciation and acknowledgement, and we melt really fast.

Then every so often arrange your sleep schedule to accommodate a Saturday snooze for her, just because you can. I'm sure you can think of nice things she does for you at her own expense just to take care of you, and if this is a key thing for her, justified or not, make it work so you are both happy. At the end of the day, it's not about "reasonable vs unreasonable" it's about what makes you both feel loved. Based on what you've said so far, you don't really need me to point that out, though. Your posts about your wife made me smile. She sounds like a lucky person.

Unfortunately for your wife, your schedule is what it is. She's just going to have to live with it. It's understandable that she wants to sleep in, but to burden you with losing sleep so that she can do so is totally unreasonable.

Our solution for our son getting up way too early was to put an alarm clock in his room. We told him he couldn't come get us until seven, zero, zero. He was about 3 when we started doing this. This worked wonderfully.

So now, every morning, he comes tearing down the hall at 7:00. As you alluded to, it is all about sticking to a set schedule.

Admitting irrationality is the first step.

Please, go on....

Once more you achieve your goal of being the "somebody" in "somebody has to say it". In BBV they just say "first", but it amounts to the same thing. Yawn.

Tell your wife to grow up. She's an adult. She chose to have children. Deal with the consequences. She's not in college anymore where she can sleep in every Saturday until noon. She's trying to hold on to some life before kids. Sorry, it's reality check time.

And yet shockingly I never see a women give advice like this to another women about how she should treat her man. You're not princesses...get over it.

You must have missed the part where she got up and fed the baby in the middle of the night every night for months (breastfeeding, btw, which takes significantly longer than bottlefeeding, and if she insisted on "fair" she could have pumped before she went to bed and then OP could have gotten up himself, but she did it anyway) and then went to work a full-time job all day?

And then OP expected her to do the same thing on Saturdays and Sundays because he didn't want to have to get up in the middle of HIS night?

Sometimes in relationships it is our time to give more, and sometimes it is our time to give less, and sometimes (like now) it's EVERYBODY's time to give more.

And when it's everybody's time to give more, the best thing we can do for each other is arrange a break. Suppose OP said that he had been working or with the family every day and night for 9 months, and he'd like to have the wife take full kid responsibility for a Friday night and all day Saturday so he could go camping with a friend. Does that make him a princess?

Lots of good thoughts here. I really appreciate the insight here - the good, the bad, and the ugly.

A couple things:

- I probably am not gonna take one Saturday night a month off just so my wife can sleep in on the weekends. In sports, nights and weekends are the norm. So to take a Saturday night off, well, you need a reason for it. I usually save my Friday and Saturday nights off for when we have to go visit my wife's family a couple of times a year, who live about five hours away, or when we have special events (weddings, family gatherings, etc.)

- For OP who suggested that I didn't take care of my wife's needs while she was breastfeeding, I think it's interesting that you would make a comment like that based on the limited knowledge you have of the seven months she was breastfeeding. Trust me, I had her back. I got up with Michael when he wasn't hungry, I did let her sleep in or take extended naps on the weekends while I attended to the kids, I would take the kids for a full afternoon on a Saturday or Sunday so she could go hang out with her friends/go shopping/go to a movie and get away, and I was the one who did all, and I mean ALL, the housework - dishes, laundry, cleaning, grocery shopping - for that time span to keep her off her feet. So please, please don't say I acted like a princess for a couple of months - that's not even \close to true. We have each others back and love each other very much.

- The kid advice always interests me. Some suggest having a 2 and a half year old sleep in a crib and keeping a 5-year-old in bed until they are sent for in the mornings. Others suggest letting my son, Max, stay up until 11 or 12 on the weekends so he'll sleep later than 5:30 ... a good idea, but that doesn't resolve the Michael (9-month-old) situation. He's still getting up in between 6 or 7 for sure. The alarm idea was one that struck me as a good one - perhaps a way of setting boundaries with his sleep and a way to get him to tell time, which also would be an important lesson.

Bottom line, though, is that I probably need to suck it up one weekend a month or something, just to give a little bit here. I guess if it's this important to her - and she doesn't make a big deal about too many things - than perhaps I should try to give a little more, give her one weekend day a month, and just take a nap that afternoon with Max or something.

Again, I really appreciate the advice and thoughts here. It's tough because I really want to be there for her and let her 'sleep in' - so she can stay up late a couple nights here and there and do what she needs to do for herself to unwind - but I just don't want to walk into a very stressful job as a zombie, either, or be so shot I can't enjoy our only full day together (Sundays). So, I guess we'll just need to find a balance we're comfortable with.

Thanks again for the kind thoughts. Any other ideas?

1. I meant Saturday night as a one-time thing, not every month.

2. That doesn't really matter very much because upon further clarification, I stand corrected. I thought this was a longstanding disagreement, (aka while the baby was still waking upat night). I'll have to side with the "wife being unreasonable" people now. Damn. I hate it when that happens.

WAT. Your wife sounds like a bitch. She should get to sleep in on weekends? How about you should be able to get more than 4 hours sleep on a day you have to work.

I can assure you, she isn't a bitch. But like I sometimes want to relive the good-ol' college or no kids days by going out, staying out late with my buddies and eating at Perkins at 3 a.m. and then playing vids ... she longs for the days of staying up late, chatting on the phone with her best friend from Texas (college roomie), and then sleeping until noon the next day.

So, I can understand, yeah, in a different world, sleeping in - for both of us - would be great. But it just isn't in the cards for her most of the time.

I can probably swing it once a month, though, just to keep the peace.

Have her keep the kids up a bit later. Then everyone can sleep in.

OP, you are right, but you are screwed. Maybe steak and BJ day needs to occur once a month to offset your suffering.

OP, you seem like a cool dude. i hope you guys work something out.

Lack of sleep may lead to health issues down the road. Get your sleep.

Sounds like your wife is being unreasonable, and is only concerned about her own sleep/work schedule.

Is getting a Friday night or even Saturday morning sitter or something really that unreasonable a suggestion?
As I said before, it really could be worthwhile to shell out the $$ to catch the extra zzz's for the both of you.
of course, if you are both TOO well rested then you could end up with another kid and then the whole issue gets worse.

I echo this thought.

RE the kid getting up at 5:30 and waking Mommy and Daddy, am I the only one who thinks a little discipline is in order? I don't have kids and know they can be incredibly difficult, but from what I hear about American kids parents are told to be waayyyy too accommodating to them these days.

Seems like shipping the older one to the grandparents for a Friday night sleepover every once in a while could do wonders here.

I remember one morning I set my alarm for 5:45 so I could get up and watch The Dark Crystal. My mom was not happy and made me go back to bed.

why don't you let her sleep in on sunday while you take care of the kids, while she lets you sleep in on saturday (a work day for you)? you still have sunday and monday nights to sleep...

so you're tired for 'family day' - oh well. if my resolution above isn't enough for her she's being unreasonable