Josh - 9 months

Josh turned 9 months on the 6th (my how time has flown!!!) He enjoyed celebrating his first Christmas and loves his new toys. He has 3 teeth (the third one just broke through) and is close to getting another one. He's doing pretty well with the teething, except at night when you can tell it's bothering him and he's waking up much more frequently crying. Hopefully we can get these next few in quickly and without much pain and frustration. He loves to eat and will pretty much gobble up anything we give him. He's becoming less and less interested in nursing, but we're committed to keep at it!! He has just started pulling up when you give him fingers to grab and is starting to try to pull up on furniture and toys. He's not crawling yet, but that's probably not far away. He bounces like crazy when you put him down and you can tell that he's just itching to go somewhere. Gone are the days of knowing he'll be in the same place I put him when I walk away for a minute. He has definitely found his voice and babbles all the time. I've heard him saying dadadada and mamamamam, but neither of them are with real meaning yet. We go to the doctor on Monday and will get the official stats at that appointment. (UPDATED 1/11/10: Weight 19 lbs. 10 oz., Length 27 1/2 inches)

My 2 crazy monkeys

Such a sweetheart!

Gotta love those baby blues!!

A New Beginning

2010 is off to a running start and I'm considering this a time for new beginnings. It's been a crazy few months for the Wiggins family and I'm not going to try to catch up on everything that I've missed on the blog. If time allows I'll go back and document some things in more detail, but for now I'm giving myself permission to just start where we are and move forward. In the past 2 months we've: listed our house for sale, gone househunting, begun the home-building process, hosted our last Thanksgiving in Louisiana, said goodbye to friends, moved to Houston, Russell started a new position at work, Josh turned 8 months old, both boys were sick with RSV, celebrated the life and passing of Papaw (Russell's grandfather), celebrated Christmas with LOTS of family, cheered the Red Raiders on to victory in the Alamo Bowl and now we're trying to settle back into some sort of normal. We're hopeful that 2010 is going to be a GREAT year!!!

Christmas card pics

If we'd actually gotten around to getting Christmas cards made this year, these are the pictures of the boys that we would have used. I think they turned out pretty cute (but of course, I have pretty cute subjects to work with!)

Merry Christmas from our family to yours!

Josh - 8 months

Josh turned 7 months old!

I'm a little behind in my postings (it's not like I have anything else going on right now), but better late than never. Josh turned 7 months on the 6th. He's such a great baby and is really entering a fun stage. He finally got his first tooth and is well on the way to his second. He LOVES his big brother and making faces for the camera. He started eating vegetables (we started with sweet potatoes - which he loves) in addition to his oatmeal and we'll be adding more every few days. No doctor's appointment this month, but when I weighed him he was 18.6 lbs!!!

Halloween 2009

Halloween was spent in Houston this year on our house hunting trip. The boys dressed up and we went to "Pumpkin Patch" at Bammel. It was lots of fun and they were so cute!!! Drew loved wearing his new boots and hat (thanks Gigi and Grandpa). Josh wasn't too sure about the whole costume thing, but he was a pretty good sport.

Such a cutie pie! Boo!!!

Our little cowboy and Josh (before his costume)
Drew the Cowboy and Josh the bear

Howdy partner

A cuddly teddy bear

Moving on...

We are moving back to Houston! Russell is being transferred (same company, different position/field) with an anticipated start date of December 1 (yes, we know it's very quick). We are excited to be moving closer to our families and Russell is very excited about the opportunities that this new job will offer for him professionally. We will miss the friends that we have made here, but thankfully, through the beauty of the internet, we'll still be able to keep in touch.

Right now, we're working steadily to get our house ready to go on the market and are tentatively planning a househunting trip for next week. For those of you unfamiliar with company relocation moves, let me explain a little bit. There is a specific process that we have to follow in order to receive full benefits (and believe me, we want to receive full benefits) so we have to do things a little bit differently than someone else who decided to move themselves. I'm thankful that this will not be our first company move, so I have an idea of what's ahead. It will however, be the first time trying to deal with marketing a house with 2 little boys!!! Russell has been assigned a relocation counselor who will help coordinate all aspects of our move. He is scheduled to talk with her tomorrow morning. Hopefully after that we'll have a better idea of our timeline and be able to move forward with plans. They will assign us a realtor in our desired area (right now, we're looking at the Spring/Woodlands area) and then we will set up our househunting trip. The good news for us is that we don't have to fly, don't have to book a hotel, don't have to rent a car, etc. Plus, we're going where there are built-in babysitters (who are VERY excited that we're coming!!) so Russell and I will be able to visit houses without the boys and hopefully be more efficient with our time. On this end, they will contact 2 Realtors who will make an appointment to come see the house and explain their marketing plan. Basically, it's a chance for them to try to convince us that we should list with them. They have to complete a Market Analysis and fill out some paperwork for our relo company and then (assuming that their suggested list prices are within a certain range of each other) we'll choose one and list the house. This usually takes about a week. If their numbers are too far apart they will assign a third realtor to come do the same thing and then figure out an acceptable range for us to list the house at using all 3 numbers. This could push it back another week (which is what happened when we moved from Sugar Land to New Orleans - we're going to request that they send 3 Realtors out initially to optimize our time.) We'll just have to take things one step at a time!