Little Manipulator?

Oh our little lad is sure testing our patience the last few weeks.  Remy has always always been a good sleeper at night.  When he was little the hardest part was getting him to bed (which wasn’t THAT hard) but once he was sleeping he would only wake up to eat and then go straight back to bed.  Once he was probably 6 months or so we started putting him to bed awake and he would just chit chat with himself and fall asleep happy, almost never fussed.  This all changed when we went to the cabin.  I understand he was not in his crib and he was somewhere different and that was reason enough to not sleep well.  I gave him a break there.  After we got home he ended up getting a bad fever and for about a week wasn’t feeling very good.  Understandable that he won’t sleep good.  But now… there is no reason for him to be such a stinker!  He usually goes to bed at 7-7:30 every night but now he is pushing it to 8-9:00.  We can’t put him to bed awake or he screams bloody murder.  I do let him cry it out but I can only handle about 15-20 mins.  Then I go check on him, rub his back until he stops crying, try not to pick him up (sometimes I can’t help it, I’m a softy) and go back downstairs.  Then we let him cry again.  This goes on for a while until we give up and rock him to sleep.  Then we finally get him to sleep and he sleeps for 2-3 hours and wakes up screaming.  Once he sees us and we pick him up he’s happy.  Put him back down, screams bloody murder.  He will scream forever.  Last night he was up from about 12-2:45.  If he’s in his crib, he’s screaming, if you put him on the floor with his toys, he’s happy and wants to play.  Momma can’t handle this!!!!  So we are wondering if he might be in a growth spurt or just testing/manipulating us (95% sure it’s the latter).  I said we’d give him until the end of the week and if he’s still doing this then he is crying it out.  If there is nothing wrong then he needs to cry himself to sleep.  I’m just not used to the crying baby at night!  I honestly think he’s manipulating us AND he has all these new found abilities that he wants to practice and he wants to stay up late and play.  That’s what he was doing at 2:00 a.m.!  Scooting around as fast as he could, pulling himself up to stand next to the coffee table and attempt to walk along it.  When he does these things he looks at us with a huge smile and you can see on his face that he’s so proud of himself.  It’s super cute, but just not at 2 a.m.!  I’m just not sure what to do at this point…. Any suggestions?  If I just let him cry it out, I’m not sure how long to let him cry until I should check on him.  I’m so tired……..  We need to fix this asap.