Sleep, baby, sleep

Oh please, do sleep! We've tried everything, really every thing. Singing him to sleep, this seems to work, he likes dirty French songs and counting elephants. But it only works half of the time. We've tried letting him cry it out. This almost never works at night times. We're trying nighttime rituals and soothing the baby with no tears. We've done swaddling and other S words as well, worked well at some point, not anymore.

At the moment, we are going through the "I don't wanna fall asleep" phase and the things we tried before seem useless. Just before, he had a "I go to sleep at 9 PM, wake up at 7 with you guys" phase. That was the dream, we had date nights with my husband in front of a movie. "Now you see me" is fun although we still haven't seen the end, after 3 tries, ah well, the joys of parenthood.

Last night we got him in bed with us. We are not co-dodo or co-sleep adepts but last night at midnight, we cracked, got him in bed with us and, after a few cries (he never cries unless he is really tired, he's belly hurts or he's hungry, I'll let you guess which one was this time) he eventually fell asleep next to me, with my hand on his tummy. I then scooped him up and placed him in his crib where he slept until the morning when our daytime routine started.

The idea is that he is supposed to sleep on his own and we don't seem to find a way to help him with falling asleep on his own, he always gets some help from us. Any tips on how to train a baby to sleep? Our's seems to want to talk and smile or worse, cry if left alone, rather than sleep.

When he does sleep, oh the blessign, he sleeps until morning, undisturbed and serene. And he is such a happy, healthy baby babling away and playing all day long, sometimes continuing at night.