the good and the bad

"The reason we struggle with insecurity is because we compare our behind-the-scenes with everyone else's highlight reel."  -- Steve Furtick

Things are rough around here right now. I feel like they've been rough for seven months, but that's not necessarily true. Levi has not been the easiest baby. It has been one thing after another with him and we are exhausted. 

He was a bear when he was on antibiotics for 2 weeks last month. As soon as he finished them, he was the happiest baby ever...for 2.5 weeks, then suddenly turned into a bear again for no reason. This is the story of his life. Up and down. I'm a big believer in the Wonder Weeks, but we are not in a wonder week and haven't been for a long time.

The truth is, he is the unhappiest baby I know. He fusses, whines, or cries probably 80-90% of his waking hours. Right now it's a combination of a lot of things. He's frustrated that he can't move the way he wants to (crawling), I'm sure some of it is teething pain (even though I don't see any ready to come through), seperation anxiety/mommy's boy. The tricky part is, we're not sure how much his eczema plays into his fussiness. We still cannot keep his skin cleared up. We went back to the dermatologist for our one month follow-up and I told her the prescriptions worked at first but didn't seem to help more than a few days. I expressed concern about a possible soy allergy the first time we saw her. She said it was better to wait at the moment. This time she wanted to do an allergy test and sent us to Children's Hospital for bloodwork. We hope to get the results of that this week. I would love to be able to switch him back to a milk-based formula if he could tolerate it better now, and I certainly don't want to pay for the super expensive hypoallerginic formula but I will if it will make my baby happy. We're just hoping for answers. I'm so tempted to take him to the pediatrician and beg her to find something wrong with him but I'm impatiently waiting to get the allergy results before I talk to her again.

I mentioned to someone at church Sunday about how Levi was fussy so much of the time and how his happy moments are the exception. He said, "He looks like such a happy baby from what I see on Facebook!" Yes, that's the 'highlight reel'. We cling to the happy moments, take pictures of the happy moments, and try to enjoy them while they're happening. I don't want to post screaming pictures of him on fb or instagram, but that's what our day is like most of the time.

It just made me think about social media and how much of it we have in our lives now. So often we post the happy moments, and occasionally the bad ones, but we all want to paint a pretty picture. You just never know what someone is truly going through until you reach out. Don't judge someone's life (or yours) by their highlight reel.

We love our little boy so much and just want him to be happy. Until the happy moments outweigh the not so happy, we cling to these precious smiles when we get them.