August Picture Catch Up!

I'm behind on posting pictures again! I think I'll give myself a once a month goal...hopefully I can meet that :)

Quentin is 2 months! (Or at least he was on August 26th....now he's 2.5 months. My how time flies!). He's had a "social smile" for a few weeks now, and is smiling more and more everyday!

Wheeee!

Quentin loves his baths now. He at least gets to soak in warm water every night, even if he doesn't get soaped up.

Taking a nap on dad's lap with the boppy. Posing for the camera even in his sleep...what a ham!

We're getting pretty good at tummy time now. What a strong boy!

His crib needed new sheets...so into the laundry hamper he went. Probably wouldn't fit anymore!

We went to Ilya & Nicole's wedding in Lodi, CA. The ceremony was at a Greek Orthodox church in Stockton. Quentin was a champ and slept the whole time in the sling.

The reception took place at a winery. It was a beautiful location!

Our family of 3...all jazzed up!

My handsome boys!

Quentin got to go to his first Giant's game against the Cubs...and the Giant's won! He looks pretty pleased about it.

And finally, Quentin learned a new trick! We're very proud :)

As promised...Julie & Quentin sweater shot

Baby Quentin!

Ok so this is old news by now, but I figured I better finally make our baby boy's arrival "official" by posting about it on the Olsen blog. :)

Quentin Abbott Olsen was born on June 26th, 2011 at 8:36am! He was 7 lbs 11 oz and 20 inches long (although we think they might have miss-measured him at birth because he measured 21.5 inches at his 2 week doctor's appointment...1.5 inches in 2 weeks...maybe, but probably not). We are settling into a rhythm as a family of three now and are both absolutely "gaga" over our sweet little boy. So without boring you with more writing...time for some pictures!

Moments after birth

Proud papa!

Love!

Sweet boy

4 days old

5 weeks old

So much more alert!

Wearing a sweater my mom knit for me when I was a baby...
Clearly she changed the name for him :)

There's an almost identical picture of me wearing this sweater.
I need to scan it to post them side by side.

Baby Olsen's Room

I had grand intentions of writing my blog posts in the "proper" order (new house before, renovation, after with new paint, and finally nursery pics). Unfortunately, I don't have any good pictures of the house with the new paint job yet, so that'll have to wait. Instead, I'll just jump to the good stuff and post pictures of the baby's room. It's all ready for him and I'm just about 38 weeks, which means he can make his grand debut whenever he decides to. Until then, though, we'll let him cook a little longer.

For his room, we had our hearts set on a farm theme very early on. We found a super cute stencil set from www.mywonderfulwalls.com and were able to order both the stencils and the coordinating paint colors from them. We basically decided to do this whether we were having a boy or a girl. The nerdy speechie in me gets really excited about having baby boy's room be such a language-rich environment. We can talk about the cows and the rooster and the pig, learn about all the different sounds the animals make, and then go see the real animals on a farm someday! Yipee!

So we started by painting the whole room sky blue. Then once this was dry, we drew hills with sidewalk chalk and then painted the green rolling hills free hand.

Next, we had to make some decisions about approximately where furniture would go, and thus, where to place the barn. Once that was decided, we carefully stuck the giant stencil for the barn on the wall (using a level to make sure the whole thing was...well...level).

Next came the fun part- painting the barn red! It took a couple coats of paint, and some very careful touch up once the stencil was removed, but it ended up looking pretty good. Prior to removing the stencil, though, it looked like this:

After that, I stopped taking pictures at each step. We added some rows of corn, a fence, some cows, a pig, a goose, a rooster, a hen and her 4 little chicks, a mouse...etc! It was fun times. We definitely spent many afternoons after work adding various animals, and then touching up. But we're so happy with the results and think baby Olsen will love it too! Here are some pictures of the finished product!

New house!

Well this post is long overdue...again. But better late than never, right? The latest Olsen news is that we bought our first home! We absolutely loved our condo and we will miss the wonderful community of people from our complex dearly, but with baby Olsen on the way, we needed more room to fit comfortably.

We actually started our home search before finding out that baby Olsen was on the way...in August. We knew that buying a home was something we wanted to do in the fairly near future, and figured with lowered housing prices and interest rates, it was a good time to buy. So began the process of pinpointing which neighborhood we wanted to live in/could afford. By early January, we had pretty much settled on Willow Glen (for the non-bay area locals, this is a cute, family-friendly neighborhood of San Jose). By end of January, we found a house we loved, put an offer on it, and it was accepted! We closed at the end of February, and it has been a very exciting/busy couple of months since then. We couldn't be more thrilled with the house, and know that it will be a fantastic place to raise our family.

Here are some pictures from closing day. I'll probably end up re-posting a lot of the ones from the inside of the house when I do a "before & after" post. We have been very busy painting and settling in, and the house is looking pretty different these days. So once everything is done, I promise I'll post new pictures! But for now.....

Isn't it cute??

Happy homeowners!

Entryway from our dining room


Entryway from the living room...kinda fun that you can see all the way to the kitchen!


Kitchen!


Family room, complete with wood-burning fireplace off of the kitchen


Hallway to bedrooms, with tons of storage space


Guest bathroom...the brown is now gone. We'll take guesses on what the new color is :)


Master bedroom

Master bathroom vanity (the rest of the bathroom is just to the left)


A garage to make any handy guy (or gal) envious...I have grand plans for all the canning I can do now with all this storage space!


We have a backyard now!! We've already planted potatoes, and tomatoes are going in this weekend! Yipee!

25 Weeks and Counting

So I realize that I haven't posted a belly shot in about, oh, 10 weeks. Well, if you haven't seen me since then, let's just say I'm glad you're seeing the hugeness that is my belly over the internet. That way you don't have to hold back your look of shock. I assure you, I'm not due until June 30th. The doctor has confirmed it again and again. This has not kept people from making comments like, "Are you due soon?" or the all-too-charming, "Are you SURE you're not having twins??" Thanks, but no. I'm just huge. Apparently this is what comes with the territory of having a boy. I'm afraid to think about what this belly will be like come June. Anyway, here are a few pictures for ya'll. The first one is from a recent painting project we've been working on (more on that later....don't worry, it's Zero VOC paint...i.e. safe for preggos to paint) and the second one Trevor just snapped tonight. In case you can't read the t-shirt it says, "Clearly Not a Secret" :)

It's a....

Exactly one week ago, we had our 20 week anatomy scan (which is another way of saying- the ultrasound where they check to make sure everything is looking good with baby...AND tell you the gender if you want to know). I think I'll do another post about my overall impressions of the anatomy scan, but for now I think I'll just get to the gender.

Turns out, despite both Trevor and my "intuition" we're having a baby boy! Both of us were pretty convinced we were having a girl (I think Trevor is still in a bit of shock), but we're equally thrilled to be having a baby BOY!

Here are a couple of my favorite pictures from the ultrasound. Handsome already, no? Sorry ladies, our two year old friend has dibs.

Looks at those little footsies!

Well, I suppose this one doesn't really need a caption, other than "I'm a boy!"