Seriously, kid? We're doing this again?

So, as I mentioned earlier, Max was sick last weekend. His illness was short lived though, and we haven't seen the evil fever fairy since Sunday evening. He had no other symptoms of anything, no snotty nose, no cough, no weird pooping, nothing. I kind of went on the assumption that since the fever was gone and he was acting normal, all was peaceful in the land. Well, all was not peaceful in the land. On Sunday night, when we tried to put him to sleep, he threw a super epic meltdown. It was Defcon 7 red alert. We started at 7:30, his normal bedtime. He went down fine and as soon as the door closed, he unleashed it. This tantrum began as shrieking and screaming followed by some howling and then yelling, all mixed with tears and that noise you make when you're crying really hard and you can't get your breath. I was concerned. 11 minutes later, he was still wailing away. I had gone in once to tell him that it was nighty night time and that he needed to go sleepy and he seemed fine with it and laid down. Again, the minute the door shut HE FREAKED OUT. We let it go for a bit, went in, tried again, rocked him, gave him a drink, promised him a car, you name it but nothing was working. Finally, at around 9:30, I told Jeff that perhaps we should try the old "drive around and let them fall asleep" method. He had to be so tired and at this point he was fighting it just to fight it so if we could just get him to shut his eyes, we might be in business.
We drove around for about 20 minutes, during which time he laughed and pointed at things out the window, until he had enough and started to fuss. He was nowhere near sleeping and we were pretty much screwed at this point. I brought him inside and as soon as we entered the bedroom, he turned into jelly bones and tried to escape my arms. I put him in the crib and once again, he went bonkers. I finally said screw it, grabbed him and my pillows, kissed Jeff goodnight and went in to sleep in the twin bed in his room. He spent the first 15 minutes talking to me and trying to play with my glasses. I must have said "go to sleep" 50 times. He finally relented and we both dozed off. This lasted about for about an hour. I spent the rest of the night trying to harness the small bolt of lightening next to me.
The next morning I called the doctor. I explained about the fever and his fussiness, but she wasn't too concerned since he didn't have anything else bothering him. She said that if he was still fussy that night to call back. I explained that it wasn't that he was fussy, it was that he was downright refusing to sleep. Something must be wrong. She said to keep an eye on him. Lovely. The rest of our day was pretty normal, he took a decent nap and seemed only moderately crabby. I happened to talk to my neighbor about her son, who had also been up with a fever over the weekend, but his turned out to be strep throat. I told her that Max had no other symptoms and she said her son didn't either. WHAT?! The only symptoms were crabbiness and decreased appetite. Max hadn't been eating as well as he normally does so I was sure that was it. THIS EXPLAINS IT ALL! I decided to call the doctor again the next morning and assumed he was still sick and took pity. That night we had the same meltdown at bedtime so this time Jeff slept on the floor with him while I took the twin. Jeff said he woke up at 4am to find Max wandering around his bedroom. He was like "MAX!" and he turned to him and said "hi dada!" He said it took him about 20 minutes to get him back to sleep. I took over on the floor at 6 and miraculously, we both slept until 8:15.
So, this morning I took him to the doctor. She did the swab and came back 5 minutes later to tell me that he was 100% fine. No strep. In fact, she said everything looked totally fine. I was like "but the sleeping, WHAT ABOUT THE SLEEPING?" and she said that maybe he just decided he didn't want to go to bed anymore. OH REALLY. Then I realized something. I have a toddler. I have a terrible two. This is just......him. Shit. The doctor patted him on his cute little head and said she was sorry he was going to have a bad night. No truer words were ever spoken.
Tonight was no different, except that I didn't have the fear of sickness softening me up. I didn't want to make him cry it out if he felt crappy because that's just mean. But he isn't sick so guess what? He cried it out. He cried the hell out of it. He's STILL crying it out and it's been 40 minutes but the crying is intermittent and then he goes back to sleep and that means I won.

This round, anyway.

**UPDATE**
He finally fell asleep around 9p and we did not hear a PEEP from him until this morning when I went in to wake him. Yes, I woke him up because of course I had super freak out that he was quiet for bad reasons but no, he was just sleeping. Like a baby.