Welcome Baby Will

Everyone, I'd like to introduce you to William Britton Olson! He was a little anxious to come into the world so we got him two weeks early. He was 7 lbs and 4.5 oz, and 20 inches long. He has brown hair, and we'll have to see what color his eyes decide to be. One of my favorite features is the little tufts of hair on his ears!
I was originally going to work until the 28th, but decided to give myself a little more time to prepare the house and my doctor gave me a note for the 21st instead. My last day of work was great! I celebrated my soon to come baby by going out to brunch with my team, and then later in the day we had a baby shower. I was looking forward to sleeping in the next day and getting into the full-mode nesting instinct. However, I found myself at 5:30 AM telling Britton that my water broke and our little guy would be likely to come sometime in the next 24 hours!
All our birthing classes and videos had us expecting to go too the hospital, get sent home, wait around for hours, etc. So we leisurely packed a bag just in case, ate breakfast, played a quick game of Risk (j/k), and headed to the hospital. After being hooked up to an IV, and all other kinds of monitors, Will was born only six hours later! Britton cried and giggled like a school girl, and I think I might have been yelling or something like that...it's kind of a blur.
He is really a joy and getting chunkier by the day. It's fun to see him experience all kinds of firsts. Like his first bath, his first time wetting the bed(diapers are too big), and his first trip to Target. He's growing, and the pediatrician says that he's actually gained weight since leaving the hospital! I can't wait for his first double chin. Well, hopefully it will be his first and last double chin. Thanks to everyone for the fun baby gifts, and your support. Luckily my mom could fly out here and get to the hospital right after the birth, and has helping me do all the nesting I didn't get done earlier. To repay her kindness Will stayed up crying from the hours of 1-5AM last night. We still love him!


On top of being 2 whole weeks early, Will decided to come on uncle Alex's birthday.

Getting Baby-fied

We are getting baby-fied, baby-prepped, and baby-savvy. We have the car seat strapped in, the crib assembled, and the hospital route memorized. We've been to childbirth prep, breastfeeding prep, and newborn care classes. It's pretty much set in stone now--we're going to be perfect parents. Right? I mean, with all this gear how can we not? I don't know how our parents managed without it.
As any freshly returned from Babies R Us couple can tell you, this whole becoming parents thing these days can be pretty overwhelming. I find myself worrying about the smallest details. Like, should I get the stroller that has a convenient lever to lock the front wheel in place, or do I actually have to bend down to lock it each time? Does my baby need a cashmere blanket? I definitely need a stroller with shocks--don't want the baby bouncing too much when I go off jumps to catch some air. Should I go "green" with my diapers, or let them stink in a landfill for 450 years? (That fact is from a baby shower trivia game...I'd have to ask Erin for the source) These are just a few examples, but it's funny how caught up you can get in all this baby gear.
It reminds me of when Britton and I were registering for wedding gifts. We totally bought this sales pitch for special Japanese crafted kitchen knives. They're made with the same technique as samurai swords or something. I can just see us ceremoniously raising these huge swords to cut...some eggplant. Luckily we came to our senses and bought some ordinary kitchen knives that work great!
I'm sure our gear and stuff will pile up over the years, but it's good to know that we don't have to sweat the small stuff too much. The only thing our kid really needs is us!

Welcome to the Jungle

With a smirk, the Escondido Village garden coordinator accepted my garden dues, and offered to show me my newly acquired plot. "Instead of telling me they were done with the plot, the last owners just didn't return my emails for a couple months." He informed me. "So it's a little overgrown." We passed cute little patches of dirt with nice rows of corn, lettuce, and ripe, red tomatoes growing. Then he stopped in front of what I like to call 'my little monstrosity'.
The whole thing was completely packed with waist high, dried out monster plants. At first I thought they were all weeds, but I found little plastic tags hinting to their civilized beginnings as such things as lavender and broccoli. So the sight was a little overwhelming for pregnant ol' me, and I promised the guy I'd get my husband started on it right away. :) A couple weeks later I got a "failure to use" warning from the garden coordinator. (Our plot is right next to the "Welcome to the EV Community Garden Sign" so it's very noticeable.) So I decided we better get started even if our progress was slow, and the monsters nasty. I wasn't kidding...waist high monster plants. We've made some good progress, and the only things remaining in our plot is some ridiculously tall asparagus and a decent looking rosemary plant. We're hoping G-ma lita will come out some time when we actually plant our own veggies and share her gardening wisdom. Hopefully it's not too late in summer to plant things. All I ask is for some tomatoes, lettuce, and good herbs like basil and cilantro so I don't have to pay Safeway's ridiculous prices for a hunk of herbs that I'll never be able to use up before they rot in my fridge. Luckily we live in an area where you can grow things year round I think. Ooh, zucchini and butternut squash would be great too. Does okra grow around here? Ok, getting carried away now.

Glorious Grilling!

Thanks to a tip from my visiting teacher we are now the proud owners of a gas grill! A family in our on-campus "village" was moving out, and we claimed their well kept grill and dishwasher. We bought it a few days ago, and have already used it for a family BBQ, and a casual dinner for the two of us. I love grilled food! I don't really have the grilling experience, but my love of the end product should motivate me to learn. Britton's family grills all the time for family get-togethers and parties, and my favorite so far is their grilled salmon with veggie kabobs....mmmmm. So do you have any grilling tips for us, or favorite recipes? Enjoy the rest of summer while it lasts.

A Blending of Generations

So we have about a month until baby Olson is born, and I can't help but wonder what he will look like... Dark and hairy?...Pink and pudgy?...the possibilities are endless, really. To give myself a better idea of what my baby will look like I have compiled a group of photos spanning three generations. Take a look beginning with grandparents. Notice the facial structures, nose shapes, and uh...eyebrows.

and our parents...we can see the different possibilities for eye and hair colors here.Finally here is the expecting couple. Here we see more technology than genes at play--the computer edited perfect complexions, sparkling, white teeth, and slightly unnatural hair color. (for me at least) Photoshop can do wonders.
Using the Baby Face Imager 3000, I will put all these faces together and come up with…

Well, I guess that’s not too surprising. He definitely has that baby look, but I’m not seeing any huge resemblance to anyone in my family. Well even if he does look like any other baby at first, eventually he’ll look more like these three generations of family, and maybe even inherit our super power abilities! Like my ability to eat cold things without a trace of ice cream headache, or the freakish ability to wiggle my ears. He could also inherit Britton’s curly toes, or impeccable aim. Wow, this is going to be one unique kid. Only one more month until we meet him.

Update

I almost made it two months without a new post! I didn't mean to, but I just haven't taken many pictures and I usually need pictures to spur my post writing. So...a lot of stuff has happened. We moved to our new, bigger place mid June. Weather in the area had been extremely pleasant until the day we moved. It was nearly 100 degrees, and the pizza and drinks we provided before-hand was weak motivation for our volunteers. Luckily we have some great friends, family, and missionaries who are willing to sweat profusely hauling around our stuff. A special thanks goes out to Britton's dad Jeff for stellar effort at EVERY move we've had so far as well as others in the family. However, the actual moving of our stuff from one apartment to the other only ended up taking about an hour and a half.
Britton went on a bunch of trips the past couple weeks. First to a Computational Science Graduate Fellowship Conference in Washington D.C. Yeah, wow. I just told people he was at a conference about his research. When asked what his research was about I just said you know fluid dynamics with the computational simulations on high powered supercomputer nodes involving some Navier-Stokes equations. My strategy is to just confuse people so they stop asking questions. Britton said the conference broadened his research horizons, and he had plenty of time to visit the famous landmarks. Hopefully I can join him next year except I'll skip the nerdy conference part and just see the sights with my babe. Britton also took a short trip to Utah to visit old roomates and remind himself why he's so grateful he's married now. Isn't that right?! Click here to see the pictures Britton already posted from his trips.
We finally took a trip together to visit my family in Seattle. We had amazing breakfasts each morning with any variety of eggs, pancakes, waffles, hash brown, and sausages. It was like our own version of Denny's except with the Sommercorn's signature orange juice/tang mix. We saw Get Smart, sampled chocolate, took a trip to view sea creatures at the beach, went to a spectacular fireworks show, and took various bike rides. I was also able to squeeze in a few visits with old high school friends and a meal at Thai Ginger, my all time favorite restaurant! It was a much needed Sommercorn family reunion because it's been a year since I've seen most of my family, and two years for the others!
Here's the beach we went to. The morning of the 4th of July was low-tide and perfect for finding all kinds of sea creatures.


The beach was covered with this fantastic seaweed. We each found our own crab friend,

and then we introduced them to each other and had them fight! Turns out they were all a bunch of wimps, and just buried themselves in the sand.


The kids loved playing in the sand,and squishing the sea anemones with their toes to see the water squirt out. What if the anemones squirting out their last store of water before the tide comes back is like us exhaling out last breath of air under water. I felt like we were torturing the poor brainless creatures, but the numerous nature guides on the beach didn't seem to mind. Still, it was hard for me to watch.

Cute kids! They grow so fast!
This is Loren and Sara on top of the Snoqualmie Tunnel. They rode for 2 and a half miles through it to find it pouring rain on the other side. Too bad I volunteered to take the kids to a park at the lake and stayed completely dry all day!

Britton's final wish before we left was to mow the lawn... a little strange I know, but I'm guessing it has something to do with the riding lawnmower part.

Quality Time

This is me staying home from book club so I can spend more time with Britton. It was a nice thought!
Britton repays the favor by working on...hmmm, not sure what he's working on. It looks like he's doing something with computer code. (Look how small our kitchen is. I can't wait to move to a bigger place next month!)
And thus we see the consequences of not planning. Renee left on her own gets sucked into looking at a lot of blogs while leaving very few comments behind. Britton left on his own is very productive, and quickly becomes an aeronautical zombie in the "zone". Very few things can get his attention while he's in the nerd zone. One of them is dessert which I'm supposed to be making. But I don't see how I could possibly do this since there is absolutely NO chocolate in the house. We'll have to settle for some fake Crystal Light. Next time I stay home I'll have to make a plan to avoid getting sucked into the computer.

Touring Campus with the Warrens

We had friends come visit us this weekend! It's the first time for us to show off our tiny apartment to pre-Stanford friends. Not much to show. It gets crowded with visitors so we spent most of the day outside or playing ping pong downstairs. We had a picnic at the oval in front of campus, and then walked to different gardens. Ok, not the best picture of me, but Dani said I looked cute that day. Lately I'm grateful for any comment about my appearance that doesn't involve the word huge.
Meet Emma the new addition to the Warren family. I think she looks a lot like her older sister, but with darker hair. Sorry to state the obvious. This is the New Guinea Garden, or as we like to call it...the totem pole garden. You'll have to see it for yourself when you come to visit. Yep, most of our pictures were imitating statues. Dani and Paige posing with one of the weird plants in the cactus garden. Our last stop was the Stanford Mausoleum. This is where the Stanford family is buried. I thought it was pretty creepy the last time we went there, but it's not so bad when you're sitting with the sphinx.