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I have a longstanding theory that half birthdays coincide with terrible regressions. 6 months, 18 months, 2.5, and I just barely survived 3.5.

Long story short: it’s a regression. If think of your kid is averaging 12-13 hours of sleep in a 24 hour period, a few weeks of regression won’t be that detrimental. I would not shorten the nap and just stick to your routine until it passes. I bet your kid will have a burst of new skills and speech shortly.

My son has gone in and out of taking a long time to wind down to sleep in the last year. We mostly try to keep bedtime and naps consistent and let him sing and play as long as he stays in bed. I can’t make a kid eat, sleep, or poop, right? Just make a routine that helps give the right settings to be conducive to those things, hah! I’d stick with your routine and trust it’s a phase.

Sounds like 11+ hours of sleep most night? I think that's a good amount of sleep.

At that age, my kid was taking a 60-90m nap 2-4 days per week. On days he napped, he went to sleep no earlier than 10:15p. On no-nap days he went to sleep around 8:30 - 9p (occasionally as early as 8:15 if he'd been really active during the day). Regardless of bedtime, he got up between 6:45a and 7:30a.

I did help our bedtime to cut naps off at 90m or 3pm, whichever came first. He had been occasionally napping longer/later and that made bedtime creep past 11 on those days and it was miserable.

@gingerbebe: this. I think around this age any changes in sleep patterns people automatically assume it’s time to drop nap. We also went through some nap/sleep weirdness at 2.5 and COUNTLESS people told me it was time to drop the nap. I was sure he still needed it and I know that professionals say kids need it till almost 4. So I didn’t give up, I kept routine the same EXCEPT I did try to move the nap and bedtime a little later (half hour each) because it seemed like he needed some more time to wind down after school/camp before nap. That worked for another year. Only a couple of weeks ago at 3.7 we formally got rid of nap - there was no question it was time. I’m really really glad we didn’t cave and after the “regression” worked itself out he was taking his normal nap like he always had.

DD did that too at 2.5. We dropped nap (well, she did - she refused to go down for several weeks straight) and she started falling asleep within 5-10 minutes. She averages 12 hours of sleep a day, whether that's all overnight or overnight + nap.