Jessica Kelso

I say that sitting from my living room chair, with the windows open, watching our sweet baby boy scoot all around. We had an amazing lunch with the family, the most perfect weather to date, and everyone got to meet Thrasher for the first time.  I’m pretty sure they fell in love with him already like we have. My homemade dinner rolls, mom’s broccoli casserole, and my brother bringing Cheesecake Factory cheesecake had to be the highlights of the Thanksgiving meal. I think the only thing we’re missing today are the Kelso’s who are all in Nashville right now. I’m sure they’re having a great time and don’t miss us too terribly much!

Tonight we’re finally taking out the Christmas decorations! It’s been difficult to stay away from putting it out early, but Kevin has this rule about no Christmas decorations before Thanksgiving so I have had to be patient.The wait is over!

I can’t even begin to express how thankful I am for everything I’ve been blessed with this past year. My best friend, who has turned out to be an absolutely amazing father. A happy, sweet, cuddly baby boy God has trusted us with. A wonderful, loving family who supports and loves us no matter what. The best community of friends anybody could ever ask for.

My heart is full.

I am blessed beyond words.

This morning I found a smelly dead fish that hopped right out of the tank. I was wondering why our house smelled like dead fish. Hmmm…

Thrasher woke up at 5:30am. Then he decided to take a long nap after I already had a huge cup of coffee and couldn’t go back to sleep.

Our good friends, Matthew and Meghan, are having their baby girl today!

I got a $300 speeding ticket last week on the same day we had friends throw us a baby shower. It made everything better.

In the past 2 weeks, I’ve had at least 5-10 complete strangers in my house judging and watching the way I parent.

Have I mentioned I’m a new parent and still have no idea what I’m doing?

We’ve been trying to get pregnant for 15 months now, in which time almost all of our friends have had babies and/or gotten pregnant.

Today I woke up wishing I could see the bigger picture, then I saw this sweet baby boy.

I totally get now why mom’s cut their hair short after the baby is a couple months old. T likes to rip all of mine out.

I made homemade cinnamon rolls for breakfast this morning. What else is there to do at 6am?

I just realized I haven’t posted pictures of our nursery yet. Then I remembered it’s because I still need 3 more things before it’s “done”.

Friday morning I have to drive Thrasher to Tampa to get a procedure done and won’t be able to feed him before. In other words, if you’re planning on being at TGH on Friday morning, you might want to reschedule due to a screaming baby.

I’ve yet to figure out this whole “you nap when they nap” thing. If I do that, how will stuff ever get done?

So far, the “foster” part has been harder than the “parent” part.

Pumpkin lattes make everything better, except my stomach. They make that worse.

Thursday night we had our “Rite Of Passage Into Parenthood Ceremony”, AKA a foster baby shower! Although I’m pretty sure the first night of no sleep was our real ceremony, it was still a good time! We got to celebrate the beginning of this whole new chapter in our lives and it was absolutely the most perfect thing ever. It was held at Chuck-E-Cheese and we survived so apparently we are official parents now! We got an overwhelming amount of gift cards to help us purchase rest of the things we need. We also realized how awesome our friends are. We’re so thankful for every single one of them!

Thrasher was really good and enjoyed being around all the people. He seems to be happiest surrounded by a lot of people which is good and bad at the same time. I love taking him out and about, but he gets bored and fussy at home when it’s just me and him. We’ve also been having some issues with him getting up every 3-4 hours at night crying, and we haven’t been able to figure out why. He’s fed, clean diaper, not sick anymore. . . I think he just wants us to hold him. We have basically tended to his every call for the past 2 weeks but we are starting to think we may need to let him cry a little. Last night he woke up 1 hour after we put him to bed, and I knew he was fine so we decided to let him cry it out and see if he would fall back asleep. It was gut-wrenching but after about 40 minutes, he was sound asleep and he actually slept through the night. That’s only happened 2 or 3 times before and it is absolutely glorious. We feel so refreshed and awake when we’re actually able to get a decent stretch of sleep. I hosted a baby shower at our house today, so I definitely needed the energy and I think he might have known it! He is such a sweet little guy so it makes it very difficult to not hold him all of the time!

Last night after dinner with some friends, we headed downtown to First Friday and had such a nice time walking around. The weather was perfect. There was a concert being held at Lake Mirror, so we sat across the lake and listened from a distance. We ran into a couple of friends, talked for a little while, and called it a night. That’s what I’ve come to love about Lakeland.  It feels like home to me in every possible way. Our friends, our community, our family. . . I just absolutely love it. I know there are places that have better restaurants, better weather, better downtowns, but those places just don’t have the same feel to me that Lakeland has. It is our home and I’m completely content here. It feels nice.