DD is 20 months and has always been tricky to get to sleep. But we've been doing fairly ok for the last 9 months or so. But at the moment every night we go through the bedtime routine (bath, milk, story, bed) and almost every night she seems like she has gone quiet and then starts to cry. This escalates until there's no option (in my mind, anyway) to go to her. We've tried settling her in her cot, but usually she gets up again, and after 40 minutes of pissing about stories/milk, she usually goes straight to sleep.
She wakes at about 7.30am, we usually have her in bed by 7pm, and mostly (but not always) she has a nap of about an hour in the day. I often need to work in the evening, so really don't want her running around creating havoc until all hours and DP and I do need some time together.
I know compared with other problems this is pretty minor, but just wondering if there's a better way - it gets quite stressful listening to her cry every night (her perfect cousin lies in her cot and sings to herself until she falls asleep 
). Thanks