Bedtime Battles

The last couple of weeks, sleep has become a battle again with Ethan. He just can't/won't settle down at night. And when he finally does, he frequently wakes up screaming around 2:00 am and ends up finishing the night in our bed. Neither of us have a problem with the 2:00 am transfer; we actually think its really sweet to wake up with him sleeping between us. If he wakes up first, he starts stroking our cheeks, hugging us and whispering sweet things like "I wuv you so so much!" You really can't beat that for an alarm clock :) The part that is getting a little old is the hour it takes from the end of his bedtime routine until he is actually asleep. Usually, he starts out in Caleb's bed, but he makes himself enough of a nuisance to Caleb that he gets moved into his crib. From his crib, he calls out to us for a good twenty minutes, wanting us to sing one more song, or get him "dust one lee-tle dink", or spread his blanket out on him, or take him to the potty, or give him one more hug and kiss, or whatever else he can think of. Eventually, we cut him off on the requests and tell him if he does not lay down and go to sleep, we are going to close the door to his room (leaving him with just a nightlight). He HATES being closed into his room, but inevitably, he does not lay down and go to sleep and continues shouting requests, so we close the door. After we close the door, he starts crying hysterically and wailing, "I need you, Mommy! I need you Daddy! I so so so scared! Please help me!" When he gets this out of control, one of usually caves and goes in there and either rocks him to sleep or brings him into our bed to fall asleep. This series has quickly gone from an exception to an expected pattern in just a couple of weeks, so now we've got to decide what to do. We could do the hard-nosed thing and just put him in his crib after the bedtime routine, close the door, and let him cry himself to sleep. Or, we could give up entirely on him sleeping independently and put him to bed initially in our bed. He is such a cuddly little man, and I know these years are going by too quickly anyway, that I'm leaning toward option 2, but we'll have to see what Daddy decides :)