My daughter is a night owl who you can’t wake in the morning. Last night I fell asleep around 10:00 and could still hear her telling stories to her dolls.
My son is a dream to put to bed at 8:30, but likes to get up before 6:00.
(And JohnT, I hope for your sake you were joking about Little Adorable Sophie (not about her being adorable, of course) because Kid Karma is a bitch. Ever parent gets theirs eventually - either from the adorable toddler later, or a successive child.)
Belladonna, I know exactly what you mean about that time without them underfoot. Don’t you just love the way they want to help, but make things so much worse in the process? When my son was about 30 months old it really started to get better - he is happy enough playing alone for a while or is actually helpful when he tries. He has never been a big TV watcher, but he loves to play things like Reader Rabbit on the computer.
but with your new little one… so you have about 3 years until you can sleep again!
I’ve got a 2-year-old son. I’ve been really lucky as far as sleep goes…he goes to sleep at 9:00-9:30pm, and generally sleeps through the night until about 7:00am.
If he started waking up too early (like 5:00am), I’d simply keep him up an extra hour or 2, or cut into his nap, or both.
He’s the only kid I have experience with, but I have a reasonable amount of control over his sleep habits.
My little GypsyBaby has slept through the night (10-12 hours, usually) from the time he was a week old… until this week. Now he wants to get up at 2:30 a.m. to play, or he wakes at 5 a.m. and wants breakfast. True enough, I’m getting paid back for that first year-and-a-half of peaceful nights.
It’s probably also my payback for bragging about his sleep habits to every other mom who was awake for 2 years solid… That’ll teach me.
Dangerosa, Kid Karma is one of the things that is preventing us from having another.
Well, that and a wee liddle problem with unemployment. 
Little Nikki is 14 months, and while she goes to bed at about 9:30 every night and sleeps until about 9 or so, (long after I’m gone) we’re in the night terrors time. And 30 minutes of screaming at any time of the night, I wake up and expect to see a stranger with a bloody knife standing over her. We’ll hopefully move out of this stage soon.
Her father works until 1:30 am, and gets to bed at 3 or so. So on the weekends when she gets up, he’ll take her downstairs and can’t understand why he can’t get her back to sleep. While during the week if she does this before he gets home, she realizes that mommy plays no games when it comes to sleep, and falls blissfully back asleep after a moment of comforting.
She has him so plowed its not funny. HEE! I can’t wait until she flings things at him.
I do feel for those sleep deprived people, as I get little sleep sometimes as well. But rest assured that when you become grandparents, you can ‘forget’ naps when the wee ones come over and make them paaay!
Think “Aden.” I know the spelling is odd. I actually saw it written before I heard it (DH has tattoos for all the kids) and I thought “Awgdan.”
I give this rant a 10. If you change “son” to “daughter” I could have written the OP myself. Great OP, belladoona, Mrs Diogenes and I are both laughing our asses off. 
Darling Daughter was firm on this one. If she could hear us talking after she went to bed, she was certain we were having fun without her. If she could not hear us talking, she was certain we were having fun without her quietly.
She was 18 month olds before she slept through the night, and that’s when she gave up daytime naps and became an early riser. That lasted until last year, when adolescence knocked her on her ass for twelve hours every night.
I was a night owl as a baby - kept my momma up until all hours of the night. Then when I was a kid (like, 7-ish? I’m not sure) I was an early riser - I tried to entertain myself quietly until the parents woke up, but I was most often unsuccessful. Then when puberty hit, I started staying up late, and sleeping 12 hours or so on the weekends (usually from midnight to noon). Now, I’d like to be nocturnal, but unfortunately, the rest of the world seems to insist I function during the daylight hours. I end up going to bed at 3-ish in the morning, and get up around 10 for my classes, except for the occasional day where I shut off the alarm and end up sleeping until 4PM. (I think I went to bed at around 4 or 5 AM that day, so it’s not as lazy as it sounds. Much.)
Anyways, when I eventually have kids, I’m sure they’ll be holy terrors and stay up until all hours of the day and night and such. It’ll be my karmic reward for all the shit I put my parents through.