Sleepytime Struggles

We've had some struggles lately with Joshua's sleeping habits and schedule. For the past few months, he's been getting up at 8am, instead of 9 or 10 like he did for a long time (the girls still sleep in until 9:30 or 10, normally), which is fine, but it means he needs to get to sleep earlier in the evenings.  Sometimes when I'm gone on work trips, Meghan lets him sleep in the bed with her.  Unfortunately Joshua sometimes thinks he should get to do this on nights when I'm in town, and I'm not okay with that.  So sometimes it's hard to get him to go to sleep in his own room "I want to sleep in Mama's room!", but even worse is that sometimes he wakes up in the middle of the night, and instead of going right back to sleep, he starts crying for us.  Sometimes he'll go back to sleep, but usually he'll just cry and cry, pleading for one of us to come in (it's usually Mama, but sometimes Daddy).  He never comes out of his room, though, which we appreciate, since there's nothing stopping him but his own understanding of our rules.  If he doesn't go back to sleep, one of us will go in there and calm him down, and then usually he goes back to sleep.  But sometimes the crying is too much for Meghan when I'm not there.  Tonight I ran some errands late, and I when I came back, I found Joshua happily sleeping in our bed, as pictured above.  He sleeps so extremely well in our bed, falling asleep right away and soundly sleeping through the night, that it's hard to resist.  But I don't want a family bed, so he's going to have to learn that the vast majority of nights are going to be spent in his own room.

I moved Joshua into his own room, which is doable if he's sound asleep, but not soon after that I heard Hannah crying.  It's uncommon for her to wake up in the night, so I went to check on her.  She seemed okay but was energetic.  I had a few things still to do on my laptop before bed, so I brought her downstairs with me.  She thought it was great and seemed to be interested in having a party of some sort.  She sat next to me on the couch and roamed around on the the floor before seeming to get tired around the time I was ready for bed.  I returned her to her crib and then went to bed myself.