Sleeping like a Baby

Yesterday was our sleep consultation and it was not yuck at all. We learned a bit about sleep patterns for our now 4-month-old. He's becoming a little adult and his brain is maturing. As he moves into different sleep stages he has "partial awakenings" (we all do) and he has trouble getting himself back to sleep without our help (i.e. an hour of sh-sh-ing, rocking, soothing measures).

So, how do we teach him to easily slip into a new sleep cycle? We lay him down "drowsy but awake." I've heard this a million times. It just sounds scary. We always rock or lately bounce (on the exercise ball) him into slumber and then ease him into his crib. Our sleep plan is to wait until he's a 9, on a 1-10 scale, and then set him down slightly awake. We'll stay with him and pat him or sh-sh until he's sound asleep. If we need to pick him up to soothe him, we do. The point is to do as little for him as possible so that we give him the opportunity to do for himself. Each time he goes down this way we'll try to scale back to an 8, a 7, a 6 until someday we just set him down and say good-night.
Sounds pretty simple right. Well, in practice it stinks. He's all, "Hey, wait a minute! I'm not sleeping! What do you think you're doing!?" Thus making our simple 10 minute evening rock/bounce, ease into the crib, and tip-toe out routine into a 45 minute ordeal of sh-ing and patting him in the crib then picking him up to rock/bounce him back to a "9" even a "9.5, please Logan you can do it..." followed by more leaning over the crib soothing exercises. Finally we reverted to our tried, but true ways and set him down completely sleepy, a "10," a fail.
Right on cue, my little man woke up 45 minutes later needing our help. So we tried again, we really tried. To not pick him up. We'd think he was back to sleep and then, no. But in the end, success. At the end of it all, he did fall asleep in this crib with a comforting hand on his tummy and he slept through the night.
I'll keep you updated on our "drowsy but awake" life.