Snowchickie- my DD did EXACTLY the same as yours for months from around 3 to 6 months and it drove me/us bananas. She was just never settled for the night until 10/11pm no matter what we did. She would go down at 6.30 or 7 and then wake up about half to 1.5 hours later, be wide awake and then hours later would settle down easily to sleep. And like you, I agonised over what was wrong/was was going on with her/what was I doing wrong etc and in the end, I figured I had no control over it. We played with her day sleep times, feed times, amount of milk, stimulation, feeding to sleep, patting, singing, dummy, nightlight etc etc to no avail. We even went to sleep school and still nothing changed. We were so puzzled as we didn't think it was normal and never heard of anyone else's bub doing that. Finally we just had to accept that's how she was and dealt with it how we could. Like others said, prepare dinner during the day etc and just take it as it comes. One day DD stopped doing it and is now a 12 hour sleeper which is unbelieveable given what we went through every evening.