Three hours of "cry it out" with Max

Last night Max awoke crying at 2:30am.  He got out of his bed and cried at the door.  He's been doing this quite a lot recently.  Until today, our tactic when he does this has been to pick him up and put him back to bed with an absolute minimum of conversation.  "Max, it's time to sleep.  Mommy and daddy love you.  But you need to sleep in your bed.  Good night."

After repeating this no-talk tuck-in five or six times last night, Max finally took to opening his door and pacing throughout the pitch black house screaming.  He even tried to get into Leora and Anwyn's room before we caught him.  We dug out the child lock at about 3am and put it on his door.  We instituted an emergency, no-tolerance, cry-it-out policy.

The lock worked insofar as he could not get out of his room.  Instead, he pounded on his bedroom door and screamed for three solid hours until 5:30am.  No one in the house slept.  (Except Heather, who's room is the most insulated from Max's.)  Ironically, Lee and Sandi, who opted to sleep in their car in the driveway, actually got the best sleep of all.

When nap time rolled around today, we figured we were in for an easy time of it.  Max was heavily sleep-deprived by 1pm.  We were all heavily sleep deprived and Greta and I were looking forward to napping while Max napped.

Max did not nap.  Like last night, he stood at his locked bedroom door, screaming and pounding for another three solid hours until 4pm.  We decided that we would let him out of his room and terminate his nonexistant nap at 4:10, exactly three hours after we left him.  He fell asleep at 4pm, ten minutes before our deadline.  There's a line of hard-cover books on the floor emanating from under his door; this was his attempt to convince us to read a book to him on the potty, one of his many excuses to convince us to come into his room.  He's sleeping on the floor at his door.  I can see a little hand under his door.

I guess we'll wake him up at 5pm.  It's not much of a nap, but we do not want him napping this late in the day and we need him to be good and tired for bedtime tonight.

Needless to say, Greta and I are exhausted and heart-broken.  Listening to your 23-month-old child throw every excuse he can think of to get out of bed is a gut-wrenching experience.  ("You have to go pee in the potty!",  "You want mommy to read you a book?",  "Can daddy open the door?",  "You wanna rock on the rocking chair?",  "You wanna go in the house?")

Update [16:32]:  Due to Max's screaming this afternoon, there was nowhere in the house that Greta or I could sleep.  Desperate for a nap, Greta took an air mattress out onto the back deck and slept there for a few minutes before giving up.