Is my baby manipulating me?

We've had an on-off relationship with baby Doodle's crib -- the one in his own room. The routine when BD sleeps in his crib has been that we put him in it after he eats for the last time, around 9:00 p.m. He sleeps there until he wakes up for his first morning feeding around 5:00 or 6:00 a.m. Then he goes back to sleep in the co-sleeper next to our bed until he wakes up again for the day, anywhere from 7:00 to 9:30 a.m.

Baby Doodle was sleeping in his room for about a week pretty successfully. Then he got Roseola. We kept BD in our room because he had a high fever and we wanted to keep an eye on him, not to mention that he was waking up a lot due to his discomfort. Now we are trying to have BD sleep in his crib again, but he doesn't seem to want to sleep the whole night in his own room. The first night back in his crib after the Roseola was gone went well. He slept most of the night there and only came to our room when he needed to eat in the morning. But since then there hasn't been much of a routine. He starts every night in his crib, but some nights he's woken up 5 or 6 times making one of us trapse all the way downstairs to put his pacifier back in or to relocate him to the middle of the mattress -- he has a habit of rolling over and lodging himself against the slats with his arm sticking out.

Last night Mr. Doodlebug was on baby duty. BD woke up just two hours after we put him down. Mr. D went downstairs and calmed BD, he fell back asleep. Then about a half hour later BD was up again for no apparent reason. Mr. D did not want a repeat of the night we had to go downstairs six times so he brought him up to our room around midnight. BD slept until 4:00 a.m. when he woke up to eat. He went back to sleep until almost 8:00 a.m.

Given last night's behavior, I'm inclined to think that BD just didn't want to sleep in his room by himself. I put the bumper back on his crib yesterday to prevent him from hurting his head and getting his arm stuck. I wonder if he didn't recognize where he was when he woke up, or if he prefers sleeping in the co-sleeper next to mommy and daddy.

I'm going to be on baby duty tonight, and I'm going to see what happens if I don't go downstairs when he wakes up. It will be interesting to see if his whines escalate into cries and then screams, or if he'll just fall back asleep.