Teague - 9 months & eczema update

Teague is 9 months old now....  I hate how fast time flies!  I wish he could stay a small baby longer.  He's sitting up really well, and become our little monkey - always reaching for something just out of his grasp!  At around 7-8 months, he went down to 2 naps a day.  Generally, his schedule is up around 7am, nap #1 at 9am, up around 10am, then another nap around 12:30 or 1pm till 2 or 2:30pm, and then bedtime is around 6:30 or 7pm.  I started him out on a eat/wake/sleep type schedule, but he has transitioned to wanting to be nursed to sleep at naps and bedtimes.  I've adjusted to that, and honestly, really love this routine.  He is so active that his nursing is really interrupted and distracted otherwise.  I love having him cuddled into me, content and sleepy. 

His eczema has been WAY better lately.  I hate to even say or write anything about it, because it seems like just when you things change, but right now he is really good.

Here's the thing about it.  I still have no idea what actually causes/triggers it in him. I feel about as clueless and helpless reguarding it now as I did when we started down this road with him 8 months ago.  I went through the whole diet, cut everything I possibly could out, and it sort of made things better, but I wouldn't say drastically, and it was definitely a day to day (or really hour to hour) thing.  With the short amount of time I have to look back on, there was a definite change in him in May.  At the very beginning of May he had 3 teeth come through, and we started juicing everyday.  I've noticed a big difference in the way I feel from juicing (it's like a detox for me - way increased regularity and less bloat), and I wonder if that also helped Teague's body rid itself of the toxins that were building up.  I was able to add back a lot of foods that I had completely cut out.  It was a huge stress relief for me to see him looking so much better and to be able to eat a little more normally (yay, no more rice bread!).

In June, the eczema seemed to reappear which was very discouraging and disappointing for me!  June was also a month where everyone in the family took turns being sick with what turns out was strep throat.  Teague was also teething with tooth #4.  Once his tooth came through, and the family got over being sick, his skin improved.  Could it be that his body "super reacts" to stresses that the rest of us aren't bothered that much by?

One day in June, as I was going about my normal day cleaning and putting laundry away upstairs, I was praying about Teague and his eczema.  I had this totally random thought that stopped me in my tracks.... "what if this is his 'hedge of thorns'?"  These were my exact next thoughts... Wow.  That was weird.  And Lord, I hope that wasn't you...! 
The kids have a book on tape called The Hedge of Thorns.  It's an incredible story written in the 1600's.  It's basically about how God puts up hedges around us for our protection to keep us on The Path.  These hedges can come in the form of hardship, poverty, sickness, protective parents, etc., and when/if we choose to cross the hedge that God has put up we end up hurting ourselves or those around us.  The first time we listened to it, I totally cried, and it really made me think a lot...but we hadn't listened to it in months.  It was just a totally random thought that crossed my mind, and I haven't been able to shake.

As a parent, naturally I never want to see any of my kids hurting or suffering in any way.  While eczema isn't life threatening, it is something that could cause him a lot of stress and pain down the road.  Hello, it's on his face!  Or how sucky it would be if he isn't able to eat normal foods that everyone else is?  But in thinking about all this over the last couple months, I've also come to see that if it is part of God's plan as his 'hedge of thorns' for him, I accept it. 

Mark has an extreme personality.  In some ways this has been great.  He isn't afraid of failure or of trying new things, and this has been part of what has made him so successful.  But there is a bad side to an extreme personality where you want to do/try all the bad stuff out  (his therory that people are either naturally good or naturally bad may explain what I'm talking about).  He also has a body that is very reative, and he has spent a lot of his life not feeling well.  As hard as this has been for him, and as terrible as this may sound, I've often thanked God for it.  For years I've seen it as a protection for him and me - a hedge of thorns, if you will.  For example, where most people could go out and get drunk, be sick for a couple hours the next day, then be fine he would be sick for days.  For him, the consequences of doing things like that that could be super damaging to him and our marriage and family are just too high for him to want to do them.

 Not sure if I'm making sense here or not, but only God knows Teague - his personality and his future struggles.  More than anything, my desire is that he love and serve God.  If it takes the struggles of a super sensitive, reactive body to things that other people don't have a problem with to keep him on the path God has for him, then I accept that.

So that's where things are with that.  He's looking really good right now, and I've been experimenting with adding a small amount of dairy and nuts back into my diet.  I'm also starting to let him try 'people food'.  Just going slow, and seeing how he responds to each new thing.