The Bachelor alum Ben Higgins and his wife Jessica Clarke now have a little one to take care of!
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Ben, who starred on The Bachelor's 20th season in 2016, recently took to Instagram to announce he and Jessica have a new addition to their family, a beautiful black puppy with caramel and white paws.
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"Welcome home Waylon. We have been waiting for you," Ben captioned a photo of the couple with their new dog earlier this week.
Around that same time, Jess posted a slideshow of their new furbaby, including a sweet video of Ben holding the puppy against his chest.
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"It's only been 5 days but I can't imagine life without you," Jessica captioned the slideshow.
Jessica went on to share some things she's been doing with Waylon -- including potty training him, snuggling, letting him run laps in her basement, and putting him to bed at 9PM with a 5AM wakeup call.
Jessica initially announced her new little bundle of joy on January 26, when she posted a picture of herself sleeping with Waylon on the couch.
"I'm a boy mom!! We love you, Waylon," Jessica wrote.
Ben and Jessica, who got engaged in March 2020, tied the knot in a "simple and beautiful" wedding ceremony at The Estate in Cherokee Dock near Nashville, TN in mid-November 2021, People reported.
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The pair reportedly honeymooned at Le Barthelemy Hotel & Spa in St. Bart's, according to Us Weekly.
Jessica called the getaway "the most romantic week" on her Instagram account and said she loved waking up in the morning to have breakfast by the ocean.
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Before the couple got married and Jess was turning 25 years old and Ben was 31, Ben shared with Us how Jessica has two siblings and he's an only child and so he "would like to have two kids."
At the time, Ben said he'd ideally like to conceive a baby or start the adoption process to have children in one-and-a-half to two-and-a-half years.
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"I won't let -- oh man, I sound like I'm just telling her what to do right now -- but [Jess] wants a dog and we travel a lot," Ben said last year.
"So right now, I'm not even in support of getting a dog, because I want the freedom. So kids would add onto that and probably come after she gets her puppy."
Now that a puppy is part of the family, kids are apparently on the horizon too!
"Jess and I are very interested in adopting," Ben previously explained.
"And we are very excited about the idea of adopting, so I think that means if we have two adopted kids or we have three adopted kids or we have kids that are biologically ours, I don't know yet. But we definitely want a family."
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Ben, however, noted how he doesn't want to have "a massive family."
"I am a pretty big introvert and I really do enjoy my time alone," he told Us, "and a huge family of chaos kind of makes me anxious. But I do want our kids to have siblings if possible to grow in this world with."
Ben also said it would be "awesome" to have a family of all different races and cultures coming together to celebrate each other. He called that idea "heaven."
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Before meeting Jessica, Ben competed for Kaitlyn Bristowe's heart on The Bachelorette's eleventh season and then got engaged to Lauren Bushnell at the end of his The Bachelor season.
Ben and Lauren starred on a Bachelor spinoff, Ben & Lauren: Happily Ever After?, on Freeform after their The Bachelor season wrapped on TV, but then they split in May 2017.
Following his breakup with Lauren, Ben also appeared on The Bachelor: Winter Games, which aired on ABC in 2018.
Ben didn't appear to have a serious relationship until he met Jessica.
The couple's relationship began in December 2018 when Ben apparently saw Jessica's photo from a hockey game she had gone to with her father and decided to direct message her on Instagram. After chatting on FaceTime, the pair met in person and Ben asked her to be his girlfriend.
Ben and Jessica went Instagram official in January 2019. They continued to make a long-distance relationship work, with Ben being in Denver most of the time and Jessica living in Nashville, where she attended esthetics school.
After they got engaged in early 2020, Ben and Jessica purchased their first home together in Denver, CO, in December 2020.
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But Ben and Jessica had agreed to abstain from sex until marriage to ensure their first encounter would be special, and so they didn't move in together until after their wedding.
Ben and Jessica initially planned to wed in 2020 but pushed back their nuptials to 2021 due to the coronavirus pandemic.
Jessica has stayed by Ben's side even during the most difficult times, such as a "breakdown" in Summer 2021 that left Ben soul-searching and reaching out to family and friends for support.
Ben previously admitted that he "lost" himself from being so wrapped up in fame and struggled to navigate life once that attention from others "started to fade."
For Lauren's part, the Season 20 The Bachelor alum is married with one child to country singer Chris Lane.
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