3.5 year old fussing/moving around at night

[torena]

DH, DS and I are having problems with DD's sleeping habits.  We moved into our new (first!) home in May 2010 and DD got her own (first!) room.  In not a lot of time she wanted her toddler mattress, which had been on the floor next to our mattress (also on the floor), in her room.  Then it was moved into the bedframe of her convertible crib.  We've been pretty inconsistent until the last week about where she starts her night, and since we all had a cold, I was nursing her to sleep in our bed.  Sometimes DH would carry her, prior to being sick, to her bed.  Now that we've agreed to be consistent she gets nursed to sleep in her bed in her room.  The problem is that she wakes up fussing.  A lot.  This isn't a new issue developing now that she's in her own bed.  She did/does it in bed with us.  So around 10:30, 2 hours or so after I put her in bed, she's waking up fussing as we're just getting ready to fall asleep.  DS is 7 months old and we've reached the annoying sleep-waking stage with him so when DD comes in and disturbs things it makes it that much worse.

She curls up in bed (we've got 2 queen mattresses now) with DH but still fusses, squirms, kicks, punches him in her sleep.  The problem is he takes sleep medication to help regulate his sleep cycles (he's narcoleptic) and having her in bed with him is like, why bother taking the $2,500 a month sleep medication?  It's going to start affecting his performance at work, and he's our sole income, and I'm sure you see where this is going.

I know from reading others' posts in here that this squirming/fussing thing is quite common.  And kids at 3.5 get scared easily of things.  She's got a nightlight in her room.  The doors to both of our rooms are open so she can easily get to us if she needs it.  What else can we do?  I've heard mention of noise machines but I've never owned one and don't know how it works.

Last night was rough between her waking then waking the rest of us.. the next thing I knew I had been woken up about 5 times and it was only 12:30.  Drinking lots of coffee today..

[To-Fu]

I wish I had answers, but wanted to offer support and let you know I'll be reading along.