Favorite phases

"ME ME ME ME ME"

Waaaaaaa Waaaaaaaaa "ME ME ME ME ME ME ME ME ME ME"

Auntie A and Oliver at the store today.

Oliver while looking at carrots: Appole
Auntie A: That's a carrot, can you say carrot?
Oliver: Appole
Auntie A: No, that's a carrot...babeeeee carrot.
Oliver: Appole...

Auntie A to Oliver's mama: Why does he keep saying apple?
Oliver's mama to Auntie A: Cause that's the only name he knows.

Does that make perfect sense to you?

Ding Ding Ding Ding!!!!

We finally got someone to accept our offer. Whew, we thought it would never happen. Its a townhome that's brand spanking new. I would have preferred to have the 3 bdrm 2.5 bath, but this works as well. Its a 2 bedroom + Den with 3 full bathrooms. The laundry room is between the two bedrooms downstairs and is about 1,300 sq feet. We have an estimated escrow closing date of 2/18/09!!!! I think we should file our taxes asap so we can have some cash left after we pay the closing costs as well as the escrow fees. We need a new washer/dryer and new carpet, but that's about it. We put in an offer to another property, this one is a 3 bdrm 2.5 bath, but we have yet to hear back. My agent had nothing nice to say about the listing agent, so I don't think we will hear anything back. Purely because I think there is history between the two agents.

Oliver will be so excited to have 800+ of extra space to run around in. I don't know why this kid has so much energy, but I think it has to do with him sleeping and not giving us a chance to sleep. I want to discuss the previous night's sleeping arrangements, however I wanted to discuss the house.

This is the kitchen/breakfast bar. The door to that room leads to the den and going right into that hallway leads to a nice sized bathroom, closet and a 2 car garage.


The view from the den are the townhomes that we really want, simply because they have a patio space.


Kitchen area...and a corner of the breakfast nook. The large room is full of windows and not seperated from the living room, which I LOVE.

Here's the front of the place. The rooms above the garage do not belong to us. Our bedrooms are underneath the living room and kitchen.


So lets discuss our sleeping arrangements last night. While Uncle B and Auntie A slept peacefully in our bedroom, Crazy and I had to deal with a congested grouchy Oliver. At about 1:30ish am we went into the room to start sleeping, however Oliver realized we were up and then started to cry to us and it just didn't seem like he was going to stop. So we got up and heated up a meal for him, to which he refused, and all he wanted to do was play, so I asked Crazy to put him down. Then he proceeded to cry and not sleep...then when he finally quieted down, I crawled into bed and hid underneath the blankets. He cried and cried until he got bored, meanwhile Crazy tried to get into the room and after the 3rd try of opening the door to a fully awake Oliver, Crazy fell exhausted in the couch. We were supposed to go to Sonoma for some yummy wine tasting today, but that just did not happen. After a long lunch and some errand running we dropped off Auntie A and Uncle B at the train station and proceeded to then watch Oliver run and tear the living room and dining room up. We have completely outgrown our space. I realize this. Uncle, Uncle, Uncle!

Anyhow wish us luck in the coming months. It will be CRAZY.

We have visitors

We decided to be nice and kind to Auntie A and Uncle B and let them have a room free of a toddler. So far, Oliver has been a good roommate. He sleeps through the night despite the fact that it would be so easy for him to cry out to us all night long.

We had a rough drive back home, mainly because Oliver didn't want to be restrained in his car seat. After several ugly crying fits I gave up and switched seats with Uncle B. The trip was uneventful once Oliver fell asleep (in the carseat). On the way home, he learned to say "yee yee" which in Chinese means Auntie, and on the way to LA he learned "nose". I think now that he's ready to learn, we will start doing telling him everything we are doing.

The town home we wanted to take a look at came back on the market after being sold after a quick 1 day on the mls. We are still waiting to hear back about the townhome we put an offer to. Maybe that will produce results?

Anyhow I wanted to let everyone know that Oliver is starting to use utensils. We went out to dinner last night and he insisted on using the oyster fork. He used it to get some sweet mashed potatos and then used it to eat his french fries and complimentary bread. We praised him wildly at the table when we saw him eating with his fork. Next will be chopsticks! Isn't that funny?

Its the gut wrenching game of real estate

So I know I haven't spoken much about anything except house hunting.

But guess what? There's more where that came from. As some of you may know, Crazy and I visited a town home that we like and has the extra space our little family needs. We have outgrown our 2 bedroom apartment and its apparent to see, as much as I hate to admit it to myself. My love for furniture has once again pushed us over the edge and we need a bigger space.

So picture this, 2 bedroom + den + 3 full bathrooms. How does that sound? Its in a new development and a REO. So far there is only 2 bidders, us and another couple. The dealio about this REO is that the lender is requiring that all bidders who want to submit offers be preapproved by their lender for a nice low fee of $500 or provide them with a case number for a fully written loan before they will accept any offers. So we spoke to another lender and he is able to preapprove us and offer us a better deal than our current lender, and guess what? We're taking him up on that. Meanwhile, I noticed that the property went down 15k in price in the span of a few days. So, I hope we can swoop in and offer this to them tomorrow and have them accept it.

Now on to the good parts. The place is about 1,300 sq ft, 2 car garage, everything is brand spanking new. All we'd really have to do is tear up the nasty carpet and replace with new carpet and buy a washer and dryer. There is nothing to fix in this property. We won't have a yard, but shockingly enough in this market, we will still be lucky to get into it. Seriously, we've been outbid 3 different times. It might be a down market, but if you were in our shoes, you'd realize that just about everyone and their dawg has more bling bling then we do. So, we hope to live in this place for a few years, rent it out or sell it for a small profit and buy another piece of property and put Oliver in a better school district so he doesn't learn what ebonics is. The sad truth is that I'm only half kidding.

A couple of days ago I handed Oliver an apple, he started chomping on it. He finally realized he's got teeth and knows what to do with them. He treats it so gingerly, carefully holding it and walking around with it, when he's done with it, he carefully places it on he kitchen table and then goes about his business, then comes back for it. So a couple of days ago, I offered him his apple and said, "apple" while I handed it to him. He looked at the apple and said "apooo" I don't know if there was an "l" there, but it seriously sounded like he said "appppppplllllllllle."

Anyhow with all the crazy bidders in this market, I wonder where these people live and if they have children, how they can afford it in this crazy area. We live in a pretty metro type area close to business, but also close to a lake. Its got its good parts and bad parts, but the property values have still held up fairly well, even in this down economy. I wonder if any of these people have kids and if they do, where are they storing them? The daycare director told me that 50% of the kids going to daycare there are subsidized. Trust me I've gone through all the scenarios of how I can get subsidized daycare and somehow, the scenarios never allow me the ability to get it. How the heck do these people afford to live in the hood?! The director told me that I have to be seriously poor in order to qualify for subsidized daycare, and I mean waiting at the welfare line. Yes that's me, always trying to cheat the system. Unfortunately I don't know how to do it yet.

Anyhow, please cross your fingers we get this house.

Well....

We didn't get it.

But we didn't get it by ALOT. Someone desperately wanted this house. The Realtor alluded to the other bidder *way* over bidding us. I just love how in this economy, this will still happen. Despite the fact that this city has this type of reputation, we've been outbid 3 times. Its hard not to take this personally.

I asked the Realtor to show us a townhome that is 2 bedrooms, but has a den. Wish us luck.

Day 4 of the Housing Stand off

So we put in our bid on Monday. Today (Thursday) we got a call from our realtor telling me that we were running up against another bidder and so far, they were looking better because they had a conventional loan, whereas Crazy and I just have a VA loan. The bank couldn't decide who's deal to take, they turned down a few other bids that were lower than ours and it was just two deals they were trying to decide on. So the realtor asked us to make the deal a bit sweeter, and we did by upping our bid about 5k, hopefully this will make the bank love us enough to offer the home to us. We are sitting on pins and needles. Its a 3 bdrm 2 bath house on a little street in the ghetto that's a few streets away from a woman's college. Crazy has been talking about what he wants to do and so on and so forth. He looks at me and says "when I walked in, I knew this would be ours", well, please cross your fingers, I want it to be ours as well.

Here's the front of the house. Crazy isn't crazy about the Spanish style of the home, or the flat roof, but he says it isn't a deal breaker.


This is the living room.
This is the dining room.
This is the bathroom on the top level. Yes, the tile is hidious, but we aren't changing anything right away.
The kitchen...needs updating to say the least.
This is one of the bedrooms.
Bedroom #2.
This is the 3rd bdrm...most likely will be a one for all room.
Downstairs bathroom.
Tell me what you guys think. Please cross your fingers for us.

First of Firsts

Today at 9 am, Crazy and I woke up to....drum roll please.....

POUNDING ON THE DOOR. We did a body count and neither of us was were at the door. Someone who shall remain nameless had CLIMBED OUT OF HIS CRIB! That little punk was pounding on the door at 9 am!!!!! I was really shocked he was able to climb out, but extremely pleased his big ole head was still in tact. It really scared the crap out of me.

We went to visit homes with the Realtor again today. It was a cute 3 bdrm 2 bath home in a suburb next to a woman's college. We spoke to some of the neighbors to find out that the woman who lived in that house had moved away to Australia of all places and the home was in foreclosure. We put in a bid and hopefully we'll hear back shortly. Please wish us luck.

A few photos from the week

So...Ollie tried to drink milk on his own....if you click on the photo, you will see that he's getting his canines in. The hair is LONG...I miss the faux hawk.




Gratuitous booty shot...we removed all the items in the media cabinet because those things were calling to Ollie and because we got tired of telling him "NO" we just removed the temptation.