Jadon's sleeping saga update

Well we have had a little success in the sleeping dept. over the last week. We have really just been experimenting with trying different things, for instance, different nap times, bedtimes, etc.

This is what we know right now.... Jadon is NOT ready to drop his nap yet. We tried doing that for a couple of days, and he would fall asleep in the middle of dinner.

So, what we have no been doing is moving his nap a tad later (anywhere from 2-2:30pm) so he is tired for nap, and then we moved his bedtime to an hour later (9:30pm.) Which is insane to me! I always thought 8:30pm was a little late for a baby/toddler. We've kept his sleep routine the same, and it starts about an hour before his bedtime, and seems to work well so we didn't change that at all. But, now instead of being wide awake and unable to settle down for bedtime at 8:30pm, and getting out of bed every 2 minutes for an hour and a half, finally going to sleep between 10pm-11pm.... he is now tired when we put him down at 9:30pm, and just lays there talking for 15-30 minutes, and is usually sleep by 10pm.

After that though, the consistency is gone. Some nights he wakes up once or twice a night and while he usually always goes back to sleep easily after I take him back to his bed, it still disrupts my sleep, and I usually cant go back to sleep and will lay awake and frustrated that I cant sleep for an hour and a half to two hours.
Also, morning wake up times have not been consistent at all either. Sometimes he wakes up at 5:45am and comes to our room. At that point I just put him in our bed so that we can both hopefully go back to sleep quickly before either of us wakes up to the point that we cant sleep anymore. Anywhere from 5am-7am i'll do this, and he always goes back to sleep and will sleep in our bed anywhere from 7:45am to 9am. But, then again, on occasional days he'll sleep all night long in his own bed until 8:30am. THOSE are the days that I hope we can have on a more regular basis!!!

So, while our new arrangement is far from perfect, and only gives Derek and I about 30-60 minutes of time to ourselves in the evening, at least we have all been happier and less grumpy since we arent dealing with a little boy who wont stay in bed anymore. Its just frustrating because he was doing really well in the last year with sleeping, until we made the transition to his toddler bed.

On a different note, here is a video of Jadon singing his ABC's the other day: