Sorry this is so long....TL; DR—my two year old's sleep has gone to hell the last few months and she is an overtired mess (which is having an impact on the rest of us).

OMG—someone please help. We are going through a terrible sleep phase right now and I’m at my wits end.

Basic info: DD turned 2 last month, still sleeps in a crib, we recently (3 weeks ago?) got rid of the pacifier which she had for naps/bedtime (it went better than expected), we are also trying to get her to sleep with a blanket instead of a sleep sack (although we let her have the sleep sack if she asks for it).

She has never been a super awesome sleeper but I never thought she was a problem sleeper until this summer. 3-4 months ago she started taking longer and longer to go to sleep and 7:30 became 7:45 and then 8:00 and then 8:30. She still mostly slept through the night but had occasional episodes of waking up in the middle of the night for 1-2 hours at a time—rarely crying but loud enough that I could hear her and would wake up/worry about her not getting enough sleep. On these occasions, I’d have to wake her up the next morning to get her ready before I left for work (I WOH and we have a nanny share that is at our house). When this first started, she was mostly still napping fine (usually 2-3 hours). We tried limiting her afternoon naps to closer to 2 hours in the hopes that would help with nighttime. It didn’t. We tired putting her to bed earlier in case she was overtired. That didn’t work—it still took her more than an hour to fall asleep most nights. We tried moving her 7pm bedtime to later but that didn’t seem to make a difference either. I chalked it up to 2 year molars and being almost 2 and hoped it would end soon.

It hasn’t.

The last month and especially the last few weeks have gotten even worse. It feels like she has been up for hours in the middle of the night most nights (which thanks to my mommy hearing means I am up too even if she doesn’t cry). In addition to taking forever to fall asleep at night (Case in point—she is still awake as I write this, almost 2.5 hours after we put her down), she is now having a hard time falling asleep for naps too. She cannot seem to settle down—bouncing in her crib like a trampoline, running from one side to the other. The lack of sleep is making her difficult to deal with during the day too—more tantrums than usual/cries over everything. She is obviously overtired—the second wind she seems to get at bedtime only emphasizes that. I don’t know what to do but we are all tired and I am so worried about the effect the lack of sleep is having on her in general. Anyone have any suggestions?!