DS is trying every trick in the book to get me to go to him - help me find strength!

[sleepychunky]

He's 2 weeks off his 3rd birthday and is in a single bed with stairgate. He messes around most evenings at bedtime (unless he's absolutely shattered) and I have decided (as DH is out) to take the hard line and just ignore him until he gets into bed. So far (since 7.45) he's wanted his duvet pulling up over him, has complained his clothes are tangled, has offered me ice cream and cake, told me he's scared of the owl, worried about a mushroom he can see (wtf?!) and has done pretend crying. I can hear him but can't see him, and the fact that it's still ight is a big problem as he doesn't believe it's bedtime. I'm quite prepared to leave him so he gets the picture that it's bedtime and he's not going to get any interaction, but as I'm on my own it would be nice to have some support.
DS2 (5 months) is asleep and I'm also worried that if DS1 starts screaming he will wake him up, and to get to DS2's bedroom means going straight past DS1.
Am I doing the right thing in ignoring him???

If he isnt in distress then yes, keep going girl, stand by your guns, otherwise all the nights hard work so far would have been wasted. Good luck.

how did you get on? i had to do this with ds2 when he was about 2 yrs old. he had always been a good sleeper but hit the terrible twos and had tantrums every bed time for a couple of months. it would go on for hours, i want a drink, i need a wee, its too dark/light/cold/hot - you get the picture.

then one evening i'd had enough and decided to leave him to it. he shouted and cried for 50 minutes then 10 minutes the next night. after that it's been plain sailing, he's now a lot older, nearly 5 but he has been going to bed without a fuss for at least two years now.

Hi, well it was quite easy actually. I left him chattering away for about 40 minutes without responding to anything at all. He wasn't upset and I could tell he was just trying to think of more and more things to say to try and get me to come upstairs. Eventually he started getting upset as he'd thrown his dummy over the stairgate and couldn't reach it, so I went up then and gave it back to him, put him back in bed and told him that if he got out of bed again he wouldn't be able to have his dummy back (currently working on getting rid of dummy, but that's another issue). By then he was obviously tired and just turned over and went to sleep - I think he just realised I wasn't going to play his games and gave up.
Tonight will be interesting - I'm going out so won't be around, so DH will have to deal with him. His normal reaction to DS playing up is to get cross, shout and make unrealistic threats, all of which get DS worked up. I have told him to do exactly what I did last night if necessary, although tbh as DS has been at the childminder all day and didn't sleep nearly as long as usual last night I don't think it will be an issue as he's very tired.
Anyway, we shall see how things go. I'm going back to work after mat leave in a couple of weeks time so it would be great if my evenings were peaceful (DS2 is fine at sleeping) - DH does shift work so often it's only me from 5pm-7am.
Thanks for your support - it's so nice to have people to sympathise!