I only waited 2.5 months for this

Last night marked my 11th consecutive night of uninterrupted sleep. I've been hesitant to post anything about it -- and I'm still a little afraid to be typing this now -- because I don't want to jinx it. I feel like Owen is 4 weeks old again and I'm praising God on Facebook because he let us sleep through the night, only this time it isn't Owen, it's a fully grown man with insanely heavy feet and what seemed to be a terrible case of insomnia.

I know I started off saying the Elephant Man wasn't so bad considering, but at some point shortly after my original post he began to get progressively worse each night. What was he doing? Oh, you know, running laps that started just above our heads in the bedroom, progressed down the hall, through the dining room, around the living room, through the kitchen, back up the hall and then around the bedroom about 40 times. This went on ALL NIGHT LONG from 11 PM to 6:30 AM when the dude finally left for what must be a 5 hour stint at work because he'd come home at noon each day and start all over again. There were days when my computer monitor shook from the ruckus going on upstairs.

We were visiting the leasing office an average of once a week to beg for help. They weren't helping. In fact, it seemed to be making matters even worse. We were starting to break, our fuses had run out, and just when we thought it couldn't get any worse, the constant noises started waking Owen in the middle of the night too. What's worse than two grown adults not getting enough sleep? A toddler not getting enough sleep. Twelve days ago, I was pretty sure we would all kill each other.

Then it stopped. Suddenly it sounded like a herd of elephants had moved out and a perfectly normal, perhaps even respectful family moved in, complete with the little pitter patter of toddler feet. No one moved in or out of the building as far as I know, but I'll be damned if all I hear is the occasional creaking of floor boards and not a single heel falling heavily above my head. All of the crashing and door slamming has stopped during the day as well.

I've got my fingers crossed and hopes held high for this to be a permanent change. I worry the Elephant Man has only gone on vacation and could return at any moment. For mine and my family's sake, I really hope that isn't the case. It would be really super awesome to never use the Elephant Man label on another blog post for the rest of my life.

I walked down to the leasing office this afternoon and for the first time in a long time it wasn't to file a complaint. I thanked them instead for finally helping me get a full night's sleep.