One Crazy Week

I completely missed "Thankful Thursday" this week. I promise I have a really good excuse, which I will now explain. It's kind of a long story though.....

Some of you know that Elliot has had difficulty sleeping for AGES. He would go to sleep relatively well only to wake up a few, short hours later. He would then calm down slightly but wake up again an hour or less later, completely hysterical and refuse to go back to sleep in his bed. So he would come into our room to sleep. Don't get me wrong, I totally understand nightmares. And I want to be sensitive to my son's needs but it was getting really old! And after last Sunday (that brought the total of the bad sleeping nights up to at least 4 months) I about lost it.

Somehow we were able to keepour cool and calmly discuss what the problem was. Elliot told us that he was scared. We asked what he was scared of. "Are you scared of the dark? We can get you a new night light". That wasn't the problem. "We leave your door open and you can call us whenever you need us". Yep, he understands that. So BJ decided to take Elliot back to his room and have him show us the problem. He went back to his room and said "Jesus is scaring me" and pointed to the corner where his bean bag chair was sitting. There was book of paintings of Jesus sitting on the bean bag so BJ moved the book. We got our shoes on, went to school, and left it at that.

During the day I just couldn't shake the feeling that something else needed to be fixed in his room to make him feel more safe. So we hit up WalMart and bought a new night light. Then we came home and I decided to "de-junk" a little in his room thinking that less stuff means less shadows and less scary things. So I cleaned up the toys but still felt that it wasn't enough. So I asked BJ to move the bean bag chair out of his room while I fed Evie dinner.

I was out in the family room when I heard and "Oh my GOSH!!" from Elliot's room. So I went to see what the big deal was and this is what BJ found behind Elliot's bean bag chair....

Yep, that's right. Mold. And not just any mold. Black mold. We were SHOCKED. But suddenly the sniffles and nightly coughing fits that had lasted for months seemed to make sense. It's amazing how quickly your perspective can change. Instantly something that had been a huge bother for months changed into a huge blessing. Who knows how sick he might be if he had been left to sleep more than the three hours we could actually get him to stay in his room.

We cleaned it up with bleach and aired out his room. But we decided we'd rather be safe than sorry. So BJ took some pictures and sent them to the apartment office. They sent the maintenance man over to take a look. All he did was knock on the wall in a few places and tell me that the drywall appeared to be dry so it "must have just been a surface mold". Um, sorry but that's not good enough.

Luckily the office manager must have been as concerned bout this as we were because the maintenance supervisor was sent to take a look soon after. And he was much more thorough. This is how he left Elliot's wall...


Luckily he didn't find any mold INSIDE the wall. But he DID find a leak into the wall from the porch. It was nice and wet in there.....perfect conditions for mold. He took the insulation out, sealed it up and left it to dry over night. So Elliot got to have a sleep over in Mommy and Daddy's room. That was Thursday night. And since I don't usually get the chance to blog until bedtime you can see why I missed "Thankful Thursday". You can also see that we have much to be thankful for this week.

Amidst all the emailing, phone calls, maintenance visits, and worrying, we got to hear more of what Elliot meant by "Jesus is scaring me". He talked about it a LOT this week. Now I don't know if it was through dreams or other means but Elliot has explained to us that Jesus told him there was dirt in his room that was very bad and he needed to not be in his room, that it wasn't safe. That's why he was unconsolable whenever we tried to get him to go back to sleep in his own bed. Wether you believe in Jesus or not, or believe that He cares for the welfare of one small boy or not, there is no denying that someone or something was watching out for our little boy. I, for one, find it perfectly reasonable that Elliot would be visited in a dream (or however) by a gentle and loving Savior. And that He would explain to my son, in words he could understand, that his room was not a safe place to be, and that no matter how annoyed his parents might be he needed to be out of his room.

On Friday they replaced the insulation and put up new dry wall. And Elliot slept all night. Without a single peep. In his own bed. He slept even better last night. And he told us this morning, without us even asking, that the "Jesus scares are all gone", that his room is clean and he is happy now.

He's in his room snoring right now. And we have much to be thankful for.