all i can say is, now that we are finally consistently on a 1-nap a day schedule, DS's sleep & napping (and his behavior in general) has greatly improved. he goes down to sleep around 8:30pm..wakes up around 9am babbling happily and stays quietly in his crib for another halfhour at least (often it's past 10am when i go to get him out). then around 1pm i usually put him down for his nap..depending on how tired he is he will sometimes play quietly in his crib for up to 1.5 hours before falling asleep. then he wakes up and just lounges around in his crib for a while...sometimes up to an hour! for his nap usually he is in his crib for a good 3 hours, even if he only is actually sleeping for 1.5 of those hours. it is downright awesome, and a sharp contrast to his sleep patterns of the months prior when he was on the 2nap schedule.
i think earlier in the year i posted in the lounge or BP complaining about DS's napping issues..i just remember being preggo and dealing with morning sickness and the overall exhaustion of everything and being so frustrated that DS would sometimes only sleep for 30 minutes at a time, and of top of that, would wake up cranky. I think towards the end, by the the time DD was born, it would get to the point that DS would nap in the morning for 30-60 min, then i would try to get him to take an afternoon nap but by the time he was tired enough to fall asleep it would be past 5pm. what sucked about that was that then by 6:30pm or so (dinner time) he'd still be asleep, and we would have to go wake him up, and of course he would be pissed. or, even if he woke up on his own, he would wake up super cranky. and then since he slept so late he would go to bed late, screwing up his schedule. on other days, he would skip a nap entirely, but the timing was so unpredictable, making it hard to plan outings and such.
i was initially reluctant to transition to the 1nap schedule because i didn't see how i could make it past noon with a toddler and a newborn without wanting to collapse myself. but after we eventually did it (and the transition took a few weeks or so before it was pretty consistent) it was soo worth it. now my DS actually sleeps in a ton, naps pretty well and doesn't wake up cranky. it's insane how different it is. anyway, just wanted to put my story out there for others who might be going thru something similar...
oh, and i wanted to add, another great sleep decision...letting DS keep his crib.We had initially planned to transition DS into a toddler bed so DD could have his crib. At the last minute we decided to let DS keep his crib in his room and get a 2nd crib for DD. Hands down, the best money ever spent. Sooooo grateful for all the other BBB'ers for helping me see the light on this one. Am ever so thankful we decided to keep DS in his crib, especially now that DS is sleeping/napping so well and I have DD to take care too. I think I would have gone insane a thousand times over if DS was not in a crib when DD came home from the hospital. For others who are considering transition a young toddler to a bed for when baby #2 arrives, DON'T DO IT! i kept my sanity after DD arrived counting on the fact that DS was STTN, safely contained in his crib. He had more than enough major transitions to deal with when DD arrived, another big one would have been too much. I think DS will be in his crib until he goes to college.