Should I drop my 2 year olds naps?

[GothicRainbow]

We've recently started having problems with our 2 year old DS's bedtime.

The routine is completely the same, he's happy throughout even up to going in the cot but when I go to leave the room he starts crying. I've been dealing with this over the past few weeks it's been happening by sitting in his room with him til he's asleep - not really been a problem as he usually only takes half hour to drift off.

Over this past week however he's been taking longer and longer to fall asleep, with tonight's taking an hour and a half.

We skipped his nap on Sunday and he was asleep within 20mins but I'm really not sure whether I should be thinking about stopping his naps all together??

So we gave up with giving up the nap and have gone back to napping at between 12.30-1 and DS has been sleeping for about an hour and 10mins with me waking him before 2 if he's not already awake.

We pushed his bedtime later from 7pm to 7.30pm. We had about 4/5 days of good bedtimes only taking 45mins to go to sleep which was lovely.

We have now gone back to 9pm or later. Nothing has changed so I can only imagine DS has caught up on all his sleep and is back to being undertired again.

It's so frustrating as myself and DH are having no evening to ourselves and dinners have become non-existent!

We've come up with a new plan of getting DS up abit earlier in the morning 7am instead of 7.30am, trying to get him down for his daytime nap at 12, with him hopefully sleeping for 12.30pm.

We are also considering shortening his nap to 45mins but not sure if this is wise or will cause overtiredness again - it's such a minefield.

I'm enjoying having my cheerful boy back in the afternoons but the bedtimes feel relentless!!