I've created a monster

Ohhhhhhhhh MAN.  Eli is in a rough phase right now concerning the Land of Nod.  He will totally still go down for a nap BUT then he's up until ridiculous hours of the night.  In spite of me putting him to bed between 8 and 8:30 he'll regularly stay away until 10:30 or 11! And that's just not awesome.  To remedy bedtime we started taking out his nap, which worked great for about 2 days before the meltdowns began kicking our butts.  Yeah, getting toward bedtime can be rough when a kid hasn't taken a nap, but Eli would start getting crazy upset about stupid things by about 2:00 ("my macaroni is falling out of my mouth!" as he spits it out, or "I can't see my thumb!" even though hey, it's attached to his hand). Even putting him to bed at 6:00, which I did tonight out of total exasperation, is still 4 hours of dealing with ridiculous.  Now I feel stuck between ridiculous evening hours of exasperation or ridiculously late nights where all I want is some alone time so put yourself back in bed again please, and as I can't say that I like either of those two options very much.  As I mentally blogged this I realized there's a third option, to put him down for a nap but wake him up so it's short and won't interfere with bedtime, and that's what I think I'm going to do.... starting tomorrow.