23 month old won't go to bed

[Tinks40]

My 23 month old son has recently moved into a toddler bed as he was climbing out of his cot. He wasn't too bad for the first couple of weeks although we stayed close by or in his room till he dropped off. However the last 3 nights have got progressively worse and last night we didn't get him to sleep until 9.45pm having started at 7.30pm! He just thinks its funny and jumps out of bed and runs away. He then starts to cry when you put him in bed! We've spent lots of time in his room in the day and making him feel special and he loves getting in his bed in the day. He has a bedtime routine of bath, Does anyone have any advice???
Thanks,
Lx

Sounds pretty typical toddler behaviour to me. Our DD (2.4 yrs) goes through phases of going to bed easily or with protest and no idea why really. We try to be really consistent with the whole bedtime routine and try to stick to our guns so she knows she can't mess us about (in theory!).

So she always has a bath, wee, teeth, one parent reads her two books, sings her one song on our lap with the light on, she gets into bed and has one song with the light off, we say night night etc and then leave. If she starts saying she wants another book / song / some milk etc etc we just say no, calmly, and try not to enter into an argument. If she starts calling for us, we go up and quietly say night night, go to sleep etc, stroke her and leave. Sometimes we have to go up several times if she's getting upset.

(I have to say that this is the grand theory and there are some occasional nights when we end up just singing her to sleep or something!)

So I would just keep putting your DS back into bed and saying night night and leaving the room. It sounds like he is perfectly happy in his new bed, he's just being a toddler.