Jessica Kelso

Last night after a long day of taking care of the kids while also trying to fix his truck, Kevin came into the bedroom where I was attempting to recover from another case of mastitis and asked how I was. I broke out in tears and told him how completely exhausted I was and all I wanted to do was nurse Nola without pain. I told him how everyone thinks I’m crazy and should just wean her but nobody gets it and I’m frustrated.

“You are in love” he said.

I am. So in love it’s ridiculous. And love makes you do some crazy things! Like suffer through mastitis 7 times. So if anybody asks me why I haven’t “just weaned her yet”, that will be my answer. I’m madly, deeply, grossly in love with my baby girl and promised her the world and plan on giving it to her.

And part of me is still hopeful someone will have a magic answer for us. Is that just plain stupid?

You are 9 months old, Nola bear! I can’t believe you’ve almost been out of my belly as long as you were in it!

You were dedicated at church right after you turned 8 months (on Sunday, June 19th). It was extra special since it was also Father’s Day! Both sets of grandparents came to be apart of the special day. You slept through the whole thing and woke up right when we were walking back to our seats. Silly girl.

Your top teeth are finally starting to break through the skin. It’s been a long hard couple of weeks for all of us waiting for this to happen. You have been pretty miserable – especially at night. You have given me a couple of 5 hour stretches but for the most part you are up to nurse every 3 hours and you’ve been staying awake for 2-3 hours at some point during the night. This has been HARD for all of us. You aren’t really sad and crying (unless I try to lay you in your crib awake), you seem to just want to play and giggle at me. I’m hoping it’s just from your teeth and this phase passes soon! I absolutely love our times together at night nursing in the dark, just me and you but I also love it when we can both go to sleep afterward! Most days you take 2 good naps, but sometimes if you wake up later in the morning than usual or if we have a busy morning out, you won’t get a nap until the afternoon when your brother goes down. In that case, it’s usually a long 3 hour nap so we all can catch some sleep then!

You point at everything and everyone. It started with waving and then turned into just your pointer finger. When you are showing us a prized possession in your hand, when someone comes up to you and says hi, when you want us to look at what you’re looking at . . . and then sometimes just randomly. At the bookstore there were two little girls looking over at you saying how cute you were. You happened to notice and started pointing at them. They started pointing back and everyone got a kick out of it. Who knew a baby pointing at things could be so stinkin’ cute?! You my love, are precious. You make me laugh so hard at all the new things you are learning. Your personality is really coming out. You love to laugh and make people laugh! Everyone who is around you just adores you and I don’t blame them.

You are pulling up on the couch, the entertainment center, the bed, pretty much everything! You will sometimes even let go before falling down on your little fluffy diaper butt. I don’t know when you’re planning on walking but I hope you wait a little bit! I’m loving the crawling phase. If we come up behind you while you are crawling somewhere and say “Nola, I’m gonna get you!” you start crawling away as fast as you can while laughing up a storm! It’s the best. You are still babbling like crazy but no actual words yet except what sometimes sounds like “papa”. Your papa was definitely happy when he heard you babble that one!

You are still in your 9 month clothes but growing like crazy. I have a feeling by the next update you will be wearing a 12 month size. Just seeing “12 months” sends me into a panic. Are you really going to turn 1 in just 3 short months? Not sure exactly how much you weigh, but you’ve definitely hit the 20lb mark by now.

You want to do everything your brother does and he wants you to do anything but what he’s doing! I know he will come around eventually. Pretty soon here you’ll be able to fight back a little more and I think that will help. If him and daddy are playing the trains in his room with the door shut to keep you out, you will sit at the door and cry until they let you in. You hate to miss out on anything!

We’re still going strong nursing – well I don’t know that I’d say strong. . .  but we are going! I haven’t had mastitis again recently but I am dealing with bad clogged ducts every other week. It feels like a huge painful tumor in my breast that makes me feel yucky all over. During that time I think about how I need to just go ahead and wean you but then things get better and I realize neither of us are ready for that yet!

You met your Great-Grandma Brown this month and she just loved you! We drove over to her apartment in Tampa with your grandma and grandpa to spend some much needed time with her. I love this picture of you with her. She’s so loving on you and you are loving on that puff in your hand!

You have been nothing but pure joy in my life, Nola. Thank you for being my daughter.

- Mama

I feel like I’ve been somewhat neglectful in updates on my sweet BIG boy. I have to be careful what I say and post on a public site about him so I tend to just stay quiet. Since having Nola I’ve made such an effort to record her every little milestone but I was never so good at that with T. Sorry little buddy!

He turned 2 in May and we had a small family party for him at our house. His 1st birthday was awesome but way too much work (especially while pregnant) so this year we kept things simple and it was perfect. He is really into trains so he got plenty of those and has really enjoyed playing with his big Thomas track. I still can’t believe my chunky little baby who came to us at 5 months is 2 already! It really goes way too fast.

We just recently moved him out of the crib into a toddler bed. He was doing good at night but not so well for naps. The toys in his room were just way more fun than sleep. We set up the pack n play in his room for naps time but he quickly figured out how easy it was to climb out of that so we are full time in a toddler bed now. He’s finally adjusting and doing REALLY well! Me? Not as much. I’m not a fan of being woken up by a 2 year old in my face before 7am! Hopefully that will adjust soon too!

He’s talking SO much more. He was a bit of a late bloomer but every day he impresses me with new words. Not everything is easy to understand though. Some of my favorites are melmo (elmo), bum (phone), mum mum (mama – this is a new one!), wain (rain), and others that just sound super cute in his little voice.

He is no longer in his biting phase – but man, that one was tough! Now we’re dealing with hitting and spitting. He’s learning that when he has the urge to spit…he can do it on his arm and make a fart sound. It’s mostly helped – I gotta admit I was pretty proud when I came up with that one. I’m learning I need to just start telling him things he CAN do instead of always telling him things he can’t.

That boy is continually teaching me things and making me see things about myself I never knew. Parenting a 2 year old is one of the most challenging things I’ve ever done. . . but so rewarding.

We are in the works of trying to adopt and make him ours forever but it’s a s-l-o-w process. He was meant for us. . . it’s just really difficult not knowing if he was meant for us forever or just this season. I can’t imagine not having him in our life.