I keep my AB out of the crate at night. She sleeps at the side of my bed. When not in the crate she always follows me from room to room.
A few nights ago she started waking me up at 5 am whimpering, licking and nudging me. I thought that was really cool because I set my alarm for that time anyway and feed her then walk her shortly after.
last night when I went to bed she started whimpering, licking and nudging me with her nose. So I took her for a walk. She peed, we came home, and She did it again.
So i got up and spent some time with her trying to figure what if anything she wanted. I was feeling slightly bad because she was not run or played with too much that day. I was babysitting my 3 year old, and 3 month old. I pet her for a few minutes then went to bed she started to whimper again. I told her to lay down and she went to sleep, until 5 when she woke me up again.
Something to be concerned about?

Nah. When my dog gets the occasional free roam of the house at night, he does the same crap. Once his bladder is relieved, the rest is simple boredom. That's why his free roam is occasional.

I wouldn't respond to, or reward, the attention-getting behavior or you may find she's doing it all the time. My dog has tried this and I learned to just ignore it. The behavior stopped.

Jesea has started whining softly in her crate at night as well. I am not sure what it is and the only thing I can think of is that it is about time for her to come into season.
I take her out just before bed and she does her business and then begins whining about an hour later....at first I took her out again thinking she did not finish but she never went....

She will be three this year and she has never had an accident in her crate. Ever.....

Or, maybe it is the change in the weather...it is getting nice out now and we do a lot outside so maybe she just wants more action....plus we have lots of deer around right now for some reason and they come up into the yard at night, but she usually barks then....

I ignore it and she stops after about 45 minutes since it never gets insistent just low short whines and I do not promote whining as a source to get something.

When my dog was sick a few weeks ago, she woke me up a lot to go out legitimately. She started to get into this habit, and continued to wake me up after she was better. It took a few nights to get it all sorted back out, but eventually it went back to normal. My dog is crated at night, so I just made sure that I took her out one last time pretty late, and when she tried to wake me in the middle of the night whining I re-directed her with a command (place). She would lay back down, and that was more or less the end of it. A few nights of this and she was done.
If she had been repeatedly doing it just for attention or whatever, I would probably just ignore it like was mentioned above.
In her case, though, it just seemed like she thought she was supposed to wake me up at that time because it was what we did for a while when she was sick. I tried this approach first because it just seemed like she needed to be shown what I wanted again as we had gotten into a different habit. I wanted to make sure she understood I don't want to wake up at 3 and 5 anymore before ignoring her altogether.

Jeff,

Not sure about the timing of what happened with your dog, but when Carbon was younger, he started doing exactly as you described just a few minutes before my alarm would go off.

Then it started getting earlier, and earlier.

It was really obnoxious because I am not a morning person. But it occured to me that Carbon was getting wise to the fact that I was feeding him right after I woke up and he was trying to get crafty and speed the process up.

So I tested that by NOT feeding him after I woke up. I made him wait until I felt like feeding him...I broke the routine and didn't build a new one; I always changed it up a bit so he could never "plan" on anything, sometimes it was an hour after I woke up, sometimes it was half an hour, sometimes it was two hours, sometimes it was fifteen minutes.

Don't know if that's what's happening in your case (I wasn't sure if you meant it happened only in the a.m or in the a.m and p.m. both), but I will tell you that it worked spectacularly for me, very quickly.

Sniper does the same thing. He's learned he gets fed when I get up, therefore he tries to rush it anywhere from a half hour to an hour earlier than the alarm is set for he starts getting antsy. I have taken to not getting up until he has settled back down and isn't trying to demand his feed. On weekends he doesn't do it because he has learned that I don't get up at that time on weekends. Don't ask me how he knows the difference, but he does!

When I was getting my pup used to the crate, he would sound like someone was killing him in the crate the first two nights. I got no sleep at all. I look over at my wife the second morning and she's sound asleep. I poke at her and wake her up, and the conversation goes something like this:

Me: HOW in the world do you sleep through that?!?!
Her: What?
Me: Rommel and his barking/whining, I haven't slept in two nights.
Her: What? Hold on...
(She removes earplugs)
Her: What was that again? I couldn't hear you.

Hand, meet forehead. Go down to Home Depot and buy the economy size jar of foam earplugs, they are like $5. She raided my workshop and took a pair. Make sure you get the foam ones, and roll them tightly between your fingers before you put them in. Put them in FAR, and when they expand again after about 20 seconds, you won't hear a thing.

Rommel goes to bed at 10pm now, and I take him out between 1am and 2am before I go to sleep. Then he's good until about 8am. But for those rare occasions where he keeps me up, earplugs go in and I don't hear a thing.