sleepless in florissant

So we had to call in the experts. Evan was sleeping really well at
night until a couple of months ago. He woke up five times that night.
Every since then he has been waking up at least a few times a week.
And lately every time we try to put him in his crib after falling
asleep in our arms he would wake up as soon as he hit the mattress.
Everything we read online tells you to let them 'cry it out'. This is
an awful solution. Evan just screams and cries and Ray and I were
stressed because he kept wanting to pick Evan up right away and after
ten minutes or so I'd feel awful about torturing our baby. So the two
nights we tried, we ended up picking him up and bringing him into the
living room to sit with us until he fell asleep. Ray said cry it out
couldn't be the right way. So he started looking for alternate
methods. He came across this book; 'The no cry sleep solution. It
teaches you phases on how to put baby down when he almost asleep and
how to teach him to eventually develop techniques to get himself back
to sleep. It also had tricks to get him to take a longer nap. Right
now he only naps 30 min twice a day. So we're employing those
techniques now. We'll see how it goes. It also suggests incorporating
a bedtime routine so that Evan knows it's time to get sleepy and go
down for the night. It seemed to help last night. He woke up twice but
the first time I was able to put him down quickly and the second he
took a bottle and then put himself back to sleep once he was back in
his crib. I'm sure it was a fluke but it's better for all of us if he
can remember this skill.