I Hope This is a Phase

 
  For the past seven months, E has been a great bed time baby. We have a set bed time of 8pm and a set bed time routine. It worked very well. No matter how hyper E was, you could actually watch the transformation through his routine as he wound down for bed. At the end, we would give him his sea horse and his blankie and lay him down in his crib fully awake. He would snuggle up to his blankie, flip on his belly, and go to sleep by himself. This was wonderful and amazing to our friends. We really thought we had at least one thing right as parents. Our baby's sleep habits were the envy of our friends. Well, if you've been keeping up with this blog, then you know that he changed the game on us the day he turned one.
 
  We started with a few nights taking turns sleeping in the recliner. E would go to sleep perfectly like normal, but wake between 1 and 3am and not want to go back to his crib. The only way he would sleep was to hold him in the recliner. He was obviously SO tired and WANTED to be asleep, but it was as if he could feel the aura of the crib. He would be sound asleep and as soon as he crossed the boundary of the top of the crib, he would snap awake and freak out. We tried everything we could think of from teething related things to changing the bedding type to changing the pajama type to adding a blanket, etc. Finally, after about a week, he was suddenly back to normal and we breathed a sigh of relief. We thought it was over.

  It got worse. Suddenly, E wouldn't go to sleep! We would go through the bed time routine. E would yawn and snuggle and seem to be very ready for bed. We would lay him down and he would immediately stand up and start bawling. We went back to square one and started our sleep training methods over again. Yes, he did EVENTUALLY give up and go to bed, but it took a total of three hours of waiting and comforting cycles to accomplish this. We were completely stumped. Why would he suddenly not want to go to bed after so many months of bed time perfection?? Last night, we tried something different. We gave him his paci and stayed at his crib petting his hair until he dropped off to sleep. This worked, but is very much a step backward in his bed time progress. To go from putting himself to sleep easily and soundly to requiring constant soothing and a paci is very confusing to us.  Is this part of the separation anxiety phase? We haven't really noticed much separation anxiety during the day. Anyone have any insight for this?