Hey remember when I used to blog?

Yeah, me too.

Well my dear bloggy friends, it feels like a lifetime has passed since the last post. And it pretty much has.

Here is what the family is up to:

We moved back to the Homeland, Texas (not to be confused with the Motherland, Russia). We are currently living with my parental units for the time being. Besides tending to the most handsome little boy in the world, I am still working for TE on a part-time-ish schedule. Part-time-ish  meaning that it takes about seven hours to get fours hours of actual work done, and a couple weeks out of the month there is much more work to do than just four hours a day. I'm basically doing the same work that I did in the office as a full-time employee, but without all of the fun chit-chat and time-wasting meetings.

Stanislav has started the LLM program in Tax Law over at SMU and has the privilege of driving an hour to and from, four to five times a week. After the first two weeks of school, all I can say is that it is better him than me, because I would have run away crying after the first assignment. And I mean even listening to the assignments makes me want to cry. This stuff is HARD, demanding, and intense.

Nikolai is amazing. He really could fill up about a million posts all on his own. I will try to add in some post-dated posts to commemorate the actual events. He is now rolling over (both ways: front to back, and back to front). He has one adorable little snaggle-tooth that has emerged from his bottom gums. He's been pretty good to me in the nursing department (especially with the new tooth), but still trying to get a hang of the whole sleeping thing. He lays on his back with his legs straight up and then flops from left-side to right-side over and over again - while somewhere between sound asleep and wakey-wake. He smiles and laughs so much. He is very interactive. He's such a sweet, happy boy. We are so lucky. And his new favorite thing is watching his mom dance around in her desk chair singing along to her Pandora "Soundtracks" station using lots of jazz hands.

Buster is great! It took him a while to adjust to protecting about four times more square footage than our apartment, plus several more entrances/exits, and a yard!. He is the defender of his new territory, but still gets scared of my mom's wind chimes. 

Being near family is awesome!!!! We get to see Plip and her fam periodically and were able to catch D & Jami and the kids on their way home from Utah. I am really, really glad that Nikolai will get to grow up near his cousins and build those bonds of closeness. Mom and Dad are great. It is fun to wake up every morning and bring Nikolai out to the kitchen to get loves from his Mimi and Pops.

After being here for a month I finally feel like maybe we are sort of settled. It is incredible how much work moving (especially to a new city, let alone a state!) can be! and we didn't even have to find a place to stay! Well, I will try to get better at posting and update the world on our lives (for all three of my readers who care). I am sure I am missing about thirty things in this post alone. Sorry. Also the camera cord is in a box labeled "Home" in the back of the storage unit, don't ask. It's a sensitive subject. (J?K Stas, love you!) So pictures might be a little scarce. I'll see what I can do.

For now you will just have to settle for this one my dad took with his phone (taken Aug 31 @ 5 months):