How to get to sleep

[Keelies mum]

My daughter is now 13mths.  We had previously had several sleep issues surrounding accidential parenting, however, with the assistance of several of Tracy's techniques were able to turn it around.  However, things have taken a turn for the worse.
We had noticed that we were begining to prop her to sleep and she was begining to again wake during the night, however, just as we went to address, she got a cold and teeth, so instead we have had 2 weeks of more props. 
We are unsure how to approach the current challenges.  She is in an EASY routine and goes to bed at 7pm.  Putting to sleep has never been an issue, she generally fell asleep on the breast however, now she is feeding for a long time, and then wakes up and wants to play for the next 2 hrs.  One parent remains in the room with her.
She has now also begun to wake up around 2am, and play for 2hrs. 
How would you suggest that we rectify the situation?  Am also now having difficulty putting her down for naps, again she won't settle, but when she eventually does will be asleep for atleast 1 1/2hrs.

[kim&savannah]

When she's playing, is she upset, or just talking to herself and playing around?  If she isn't crying, I would leave her.  Maybe she will get bored when she doesn't have an audience and go back to sleep.  Sometimes even when we think we are helping, we actually keep them up longer than they would be otherwise. 

I know my dd started playing before naps, and sometimes night, for up to 45 min. but we just leave her unless she starts to wail.  She is often very happy and we hear her talking and then, right before she goes to sleep, she might whine a little--more of a mantra cry than actual crying--and then she goes to sleep.  If she ever does start actually crying, we will go in, lay her back down and tell her its night-night time and then leave again.  This seems to go much better now that we leave her than when we used to stay in the room.

HTH! 

~Kim