Little Stinker

This girl has been giving us a run for our money lately.  She has been a really good sleeper since she was a baby for the most part, but she has never slept as much as Emerson.  I think I got spoiled with that boy and his 4 hour naps in the afternoon and then 12 hour nights.  She is a pretty light sleeper, and is pretty good at manipulating us.  I'll just tell it like it is. :)

We were going through this ridiculous bedtime routine where I'd put her in bed, tuck her in, start walking out the door, and this is what would happen:

Me: "Goodnight Sammi.  Love you."
Start walking toward door
Sammi: "Mommy!  Wanna drinka water."
Me: "Ok, you can have one."
Gets a few drops of water in the bottom of a Dixie cup
Me: "Ok, goodnight."
Starts walking toward door again...almost made it...touching doorknob...
Sammi: "Mommy!  Wanna sleep with Brown Bear (her books)."
Me: "You already have Brown Bear.  Night-night!"
Running to door...touching doorknob...closing quietly...
Sammi: "Mommy! I have happy dreams 'bout Tiana, and Ariel, and Belle, and Aurora, and Snow White, and Daddy, and Prince Eric and stinky-winky Mommy, and...
Me: "Ok! Good Night!"
Close door, walk away.
Shrieking ensues since I didn't let her finish, so we start it all over again with me feeling extremely exasperated.

Soo....fast forward past a week of this.  I am ready to pull my hair out, and I decide, "This is the night!  Emerson is fast asleep since he didn't have a nap today, Ben is on call, I have nothing else to do.  She is going to cry it out."  Now don't get me wrong, she cried it out once or twice when she was a baby and we were doing the initial sleep training thing, but she can form coherent words now and it's so much harder.

So I tell her goodnight, shut the door, and wait.  She immediately goes berserk, starts pounding on the door in a fit, and keeps hitting the doorknob guard until she breaks it apart and throws it furiously into the garbage in her room.  Then she tries to open the door so I put her in her bed about 10 separate times until I just decided I was going to hold the doorknob shut.  Meanwhile, I am silently laughing because I can either do that or cry.  She is just so MAD!  I never knew so much rage could come from such a small girl.

Then she laid on the ground to push books under the door.  I wish I could've gotten inside her little mind to see what she thought she would accomplish by doing this.  Maybe she thought if I saw the books I would think, "Why look! Books! I think I'll go in and read them to Sammi!"

Bait NOT taken.

Since that plan failed, she just resorted to saying "Mommy, mommy, mommy, mommy, mommy, etc." for half an hour straight (I timed it) with a few choice phrases thrown in like, "Open the door Mommy!  Stinky-winky Mommy!"  "Don't close the door Stinky Mommy!"  I just had to laugh.  Then it got even better when she started thinking up excuses like "I wanna sit on the potty!", "I'm sick!", "I poot again!" (She says poot for poop), "Change my diaper!", "Want Daddy!".  I am proud to say, I didn't budge, and she eventually gave up, climbed back in bed, and went to sleep. 

I think she learned to stay in her room from that experience because while she can open her door on her own now, she won't come out of her room.  Thus we found this when we went up to bed the other night.  Door open, girl hit with the sleep dart in her doorway.

And now our newest problem is that she is waking up at 3 am because she is hungry.  Any suggestions?  Similar experiences?