Big beds, potty training, and doing it "all mysehlssss"

Growing up has been good and bad for Sawyer. Starting in December we have slowly been transitioning him into a little boy rather than a baby. It started out with a big boy bed. He was SO excited. I was nervous thinking that I would be fighting him with bedtime again. I didn't at first. One day after a morning outing I decided let's switch your bed. We got out tools and Sawyer was so excited to "fix" his big boy bed. He helped screw in screws and tried to hammer things. He was ecstatic! He napped for the first time all by himself because he was so excited about it. He napped great for about a week straight in his big boy bed. Then the excitement wore off and he was back to his usual no napping life.
As for night time, he started out great. We even switched him a few days before Jake and I went on a day trip to Portland. He was just so proud to be in a big bed.
We made a "fort" over his bed with blankets, chairs, and a ladder. He slept in that fort from a week after he had a big boy bed (the first week in December 2011) until mid March 2012. The only reason the fort even came down was because Dosh jumped on top of it and it crashed down. It was past bedtime already, so I didn't fix it. Sawyer was disappointed, but still slept fine.
He would go to sleep great and then in the mornings he would either come climb in bed with me until I woke up, or go down into the kitchen and get himself cereal or a peanut butter sandwhich.
These days he fights and fights any kind of sleep. He can get out of bed and I, mistakingly, told him if he couldn't stay in his big boy bed I would turn it back into a baby bed. I had no intention of doing so and he called my bluff and constantly asks for a baby bed now. 

Then in February I finally broke down and decided to get rid of the binkies. It was SO hard! We slowly took them away and put them up high. It was nice that all the little kids he plays with (cousins and nursery kids) had just gotten rid of their binkies or they never took them. So, I kept telling him how so and so was bigger and didn't use binkies anymore. That helped. I caved a couple nights and went and pulled down a binky from the box because he just wasn't going to sleep. We finally got him to get rid of them for good though. It was tough too because Eliot hadn't been a binky baby until right before this and Sawyer was jealous of Eliot's binky's. All of the sudden he started to ask to be a baby again. Even now, with Eliot not even taking binkies, Sawyer will randomly ask to cuddle on the couch with his blue binky and play with Mommy's hair. I say no, but I do miss those days too.

About the same time we were weaning Sawyer from the binky I told him I wasn't going to buy anymore diapers once they were gone. I told him how this meant he had to go in the potty. I got stickers for him, but they were only sort of an incentive so I bought a couple bags of m&ms and he got one every time he sat on the potty. He became a chocolate fiend, but he potty trained so easily. He had two accidents the whole week and that was because we weren't home and he was scared of using the big public toilets. Then he didn't have an accident for a long time...until he started doing it when I put him into time out. He is great though. As long as I don't mention the bathroom to him AT ALL he will either ask for help or just go do it. Come to think of it, he is that way about most things.

Sawyer is so independent. He is an old soul in a little kid body. Sometimes he just wants to do things his way "all by mysehlsss!" He wants to make his own food. (So he eats peanut butter sandwiches a lot) He wants to climb in his car seat and buckle it on his own. If you do ANYTHING for him when he was expecting you to do it he tantrums, gets it right back to where it was and proceeds to do it. He started trying to dress himself too. He does a great job, but he is now trying to revert back to "YOU DO IT! LIKE A BABY!" He is my great big boy though and I love his determination, even when I'm frustrated and in a hurry.