It is so easy to just write about the happy stuff, post fun pictures and pretend we live a glorious perfect life. In fact when you look at many people’s facebook feeds, instagram accounts or read their blogs, it sounds like they have the perfect life. It’s easier to sugarcoat things but the reality is that we are all just trying to make it, amiright? No one’s life is perfect. We all have bills to pay, we all have to work, we all get sad sometimes, we all have family problems, I could go on and on. So, that is what this post is about. Our behind the scenes reality. We are normal folks trying to make it just like everyone else.

For the past two weeks I have been easing back into work. I know I should be thankful I got to be home for 12 weeks but it is so hard. There was a day that Lainey was sleeping in the morning before I went to the office and then I had a meeting over lunch. By 1:30 right before it was time to start seeing afternoon patients, I was crying because I missed her. Thankfully Adam brought her to me. I just keep trying to remind myself how blessed we are that this can even happen….Adam bringing her in to see Mama. If she was in daycare I wouldn’t be able to see her at all during the day. At least I am seeing her midday every day. Work has been tough, though. I’ve been barely able to function come 7 at night. Crazy, crazy I know. These are patients I have cared for years but when seeing them I am trying to figure out what happened to them these past few months, who changed what, etc all while answering their wonderful curious questions about Lainey….all in the same length of appointment that I have always seen them in. Like I said, my brain is dust by the end of the day.

For the second year in a row, the IRS got us. When we bought and started Adam’s sign business two years ago we knew self-employment taxes would be different than what we were accustomed to but were not nearly prepared for how different. At first we didn’t have the best accountant so last year was not good. After hiring a new accountant we thought we were on track….which we were (kind of) but still got nailed for 2014. Needless to say, it feels like we went a mile backwards on April 15th. We are becoming a corporation now and have made even more changes to help prevent 2015 from being a repeat (or I should say a three-peat).

Right before we left for Mississippi Lainey started to really spit up more than ever. This continued during the trip and picked up in quantity once we returned home. I continuously had a “reason” for it. We had traveled. She was tired. It was something in the breast milk (so I tried a different Mama’s). You know how it is. Finally, last Thursday I decided to weigh her here at home on our UPS scale. I was so angry with myself when I realized she had only gained 2oz since her 2 month check. This meant she had dropped from the 50th percentile to the 20th percentile. I was devastated. It worsened last weekend to the point that we were having a difficult time consoling her at times. This was not our Lainey. She wasn’t smiley like normal. By Sunday morning it was obvious she was just plain hungry from not being able to keep her milk down. I cried as I switched her to formula…..and cried more when she continued to spit that up. I’ve been too busy being a Mama to pay attention to what was really going on. She’s been congested, was coughing, was crying when she was spitting up (like it was hurting), was arching her back, and had the hiccups all of the time. The poor girl has reflux. She had her first dose of Zantac Monday morning and has been our little Lainey again ever since. Praise God. I’ve had several people ask why I don’t just switch her to formula. I won’t go into too much detail other than to say that breast milk truly is the best thing for an infant if it is available and if the infant is tolerating it. If it is not working for Lainey, we have formula on hand and will not hesitate to do what is the best thing for her. I simply cannot emphasize enough, though that medically speaking breast milk is the best thing for infants. Enuff’ said.

Two days before we flew to Mississippi our sweet ol’ guy Pepper had a check-up for his blood pressure. This guy was our first baby. Almost 19 years old, we got him as a baby when we were first married. We loved him like nothing else. He had a horrible stroke coming out of anesthesia after getting a tooth pulled last May. Our vet thought that he could make it through if we were willing to work with him. Of course we were. He has been deaf for years but was blind after the stroke. Last year was hard for us (baby-wise). It was like God gave us a “project” in taking care of Pepper. He was a pretty sick dude at the beginning and needed a lot of help bouncing back but once he figured things out he learned the entire main level of our home by following along the walls (he was called a mall-walker by some!) and could feel where the sun was and would sun-bathe just like normal. He never stopped eating and always pottied where his litter was (even though he was 19, deaf and blind!). He would purr like you wouldn’t believe as soon as we picked him up….drool, too. After Lainey was born we started noticing that he was losing weight, even though he was still pigging out. They found a golf-ball sized mass in his belly that day during his blood pressure check. A tumor that was likely robbing his poor body of its nutrients, causing him to wither away in front of us. We helped him go to sleep that day in my arms. It is like he hung in here long enough until we had our real baby here. I know he is being loved on by our four babies up there as I write. You would think that over the years and after putting multiple loved animals down it would maybe get a little easier. It hasn’t. It gets harder.

The same time the reflux started Lainey’s naps went to the crapper. We hate to make a big stink out of it as she still sleeps through the night which we realize is AH.MAZ.ING. but we know that for her to develop and be as happy as possible she needs to get the best rest as possible. She really struggles getting past the 30-45 minute mark which is when REM sleep really hits, which is important. We know it will all work itself out…eventually. Meanwhile, what a freaking pain. And, being who I am I am reading lots of stuff, The No Cry Sleep Solution, The Happiest Baby on the Block, On Becoming Babywise….none of which I really can “buy-in” completely to but each have little tidbits of helpful info, I guess. The other thing that became an issue is how loud she is at night. People, hows come none of you told us babies were so noisy? Seriously. She may sleep through the night but I’m not sure what she is doing in there in her room with all of that grunting, squeaking, etc-all being nice and amplified through the monitor. Adam does great sleeping right through that. Not me as I basically suck at sleeping. So, when I started back to work I moved to the guest room. Now at bedtime we all go to our own room. Very sad. I’ve slept next to that man for almost 19 years, kind of lonely.

In May it will be one year since we started redoing our deck. Some of the boards were rotting so we decided we were going to redo it and then add a pergola to add some shade. Meanwhile, about a year later the deck isn’t done. I’d like to say we are close to being done but we really aren’t. Cheers to being slow.

So….the whole point of this post is to share that we are real. We are facing many of the same challenges that most people are each and every day but what we need to try to remember is to not only to praise God during the good times…. but also the bad. I hope the rest of your weekend is fantabulous!