Did you see that?

Eli is or little daredevil. We hear comments from him all the time like; "WOW! See that?" or "uh-oh!" This is usually followed after his attempt to jump off of something unstable, or wreck... without getting injured too badly. And then he will repeat himself just for fun. He thinks these things are totally cool. He's just nuts sometimes! Even watching him run makes me nervous because his whole body looks like he's out of control and could fall at any given moment.

Last night we had a scary moment of when I could say, "yes, I saw that!" and I'm glad I did!

  Our couch in the living room backs up to some windows that are dressed with rolling shades. Eli saw a fly bouncing around the windows and wanted to kill it with the fly swatter. So he climbed on to the back of our couches so that he'd be the height of the windows. No big deal. Right? In the back of my mind, I was rooting for him to kill the fly too!

Luckily I was nursing Calvin in the same room, so I watched the whole thing happen, and I still don't know how it happened, but next thing I knew Eli had fallen off the back of the couch and was hanging with the cord of the blinds around his neck. I screamed and bounded across the room to lift him out of the scary predicament. It was seconds and my response was immediate. He wasn't hurt more than a rope burn around his neck, it was pretty sore and puffy last night, but faded to nothing more than a little red line around his neck that looks like a scratch.

It was just too close and too much for me. The thought of what might have been, or what might have happened if I hadn't been there just haunts me. It shook me up pretty good. Definitely not something I wanted to see. The flash of him hanging by his neck on that cord just replays in my mind.

It's him that I worry about slipping in the tub and falling under the water because he's goofing around (yes, we've saved him from would-be tub disasters before), or getting into some kind of predicament that will leave him hurt in some way.

It's for reasons like these- incidents that can happen all to commonly, and all too quickly that Brian and I have been fighting for 9 months about safety issues we've had with recent changes in the church parking lot, and the speed at which the increased users take when using the entrance that borders our house. It's a long story, and one I will record at a later time, but Brian appropriately compared our undertaking as trying to boil the ocean! It has seemed that way, nearly impossible at times! Over the past nine months, we've become experts in pedestrian fatality statistics, parking lot fatalities, and spot-the-tot statistics. We've had a lot of frustrating moments. Mostly that our battle takes place with people who are members of the church and should understand our concerns, yet we have to rely on them to get things done, and those "things" just don't get done.

Last week, however, we learned that a new manager of the project had been placed and within days we had speed limit signs placed and 4 speed bumps put in! It was a great success in our efforts. It was nice to see some changes finally happening.

Safety over my children is paramount in my prayers. At one moment I was feeling so overwhelmed with the responsibility of keeping them safe, and not having the support and resources to do that (regarding the traffic issues by our house), that I paused to say a little prayer about it on the way downstairs. As if in an immediate answer, I heard Jackson playing with his cars and trucks on the floor and singing "I am a Child of God." I felt the reassurance that these children were God's children too, and that they were just as important to Him as they are to me. I felt relief in knowing He would do all in his part to watch over and protect them...and He knows I am doing all I can to do the same.