Week in review

This was a really relaxing weekend. :-) Crazy and I got a lot of sleep and we just spent a really lazy weekend together. We did a bit of shopping, rearranging the furniture (thanks Oliver), and we cooked a lot.

We discovered Oliver CANNOT be trusted not to keep his clothes on in the morning. So if we don't want to find his crib soiled, we need to either make him wear these pajamas or be prepared to get up really really early. The plastic colander behind him was used as a hat, shockingly enough it fit his large head.


Sorry, the photo is unflattering however Crazy thought these were hilarious. Oliver likes to up end everything when he's awake. We've taken a lot of his toys away in the hopes he will find appreciation for the few he has left. Perhaps when he learns to pick up toys he will get them all back. Besides my living room was looking like a toy store barfed on it so I decided to remove alot of them. He doesn't really notice. Although we do switch out the toys every so often.


Pixar is hiring. I wonder if I should throw my resume in. :-)

2 year check up

Height: 33"
Weight: 28.75 lbs
Head circumference: 20"

Favorite books now

I love that when I tell him to go get a book he goes to grab a book and then climbs up on my lap.

Oliver's favorite books currently are:
1. SNOW by P.D. Eastman
I love reading this book to him. I try to use iambic pentameter when I'm reading this book. He will bring it to me and say "SNOW!" the way I say it when I'm reading to him. So much more rewarding reading to him now than when he was teeny tiny.
2. I love you stinky face by Lisa McCourt
He brings this book to me and makes me read it over and over again. He also brings this book to Crazy to read as well.
3. Mr. Brown can Moooooo by Dr. Seuss. He loooooves the noises that come along with the book. He loves to knock on the book when the knock knock page comes up. He holds his hand up in anticipation. I've read this book so much I've memorized this. I've also memorized "Wet pet, dry pet, your pet, my pet!"

Books he brings Crazy are:
1. Goodnight Moon by Margaret Wise Brown
2. The potty book thanks to his grandparents in Kansas. I can't be in the same room when he starts reading it cause it grosses me out. Sorry! A quote from the book "chugga chugga poo poo" yuck.

Who is this guy and why is he so CRAZY?

As some of you may know, we had a bout of really HAWT weather this weekend. I meant it, it was in the 80s-90s and EVERYONE was cranky.

For starters, I need to let everyone know that my poor poor Kylee guuuurl had a nasty hot spot this week and I had to shave down her tush and almost whacked off the hair on her nubbin. Anyhow that got better, but on Thursday when we came home from work I noticed that she had completely scratched off the hair on her neck. Then I had to shave her down and Crazy gave her a bath. We put a e-collar on her and she was healing nicely. Sunday morning at 3 am I noticed heavy panting. One of the dogs woke me up out of a deep slumber. Since Crazy is fighting a respiratory ailment currently, he's sleeping on the couch in the living room while the cal king sized bed is all for me!!! Anyhow I woke up and realized no one was in the room, and so I opened the door and noticed my poor Kylee standing in the hallway....without her collar. I also noticed she had scratched herself bloody, it was horrific. I woke Crazy up and he cleaned her up. We debated whether we should take her to a vet and what we should do. We cleaned her wound and slapped some double antibiotic ointment on her. Lets just hope that her hotspot heals and she can go on walks with her dogwalker next week. There was blood dripping on the floors in the bathroom and around the hallway. We have to get the carpet cleaner out to clean the mess up. Plus a toddler eating on the carpet doesn't help the clean carpet situation.

So its HAWT. We gave Oliver a bath tonight like we did last night. While I was dressing him tonight after his bath, I heard Crazy set the heater. Why oh why oh why would someone set up a heater when its so HAWT? I have learned that I have to nip this in the bud quickly, so I asked him why he turned on the heater. He said he set it to activate if it goes under 74 degrees and that the room gets cold. Now how will the room get under 74 degrees if we are going through a hot spell? We are trying to give Oliver as normal of a life as possible. Crazy's mind just jumps and jumps to crazy places. Like when we were in the process of buying the town house, he wanted us to install bullet proof glass in the sliding glass doors in Oliver's room...in case of an intruder or stray bullet. Its just one of those things that make you think what the heck is this guy talking about?

Anyhow...lets move on. Oliver is starting to parrot things you say, but somehow I feel like he's saying it with a sassy tone. He sits in the shopping cart and starts nudging me away with his foot. I say "Oliver, there is no kicking", he looks me right in the face and says "No kicking", all the while shoving me with his foot, kind of daring me to do something to him. We are in the elevator, and Oliver's hand is moving towards the elevator doors, Crazy says "Oliver do NOT touch" to which Oliver held up his one finger and touched the doors, then Crazy will grab his hand and say "Oliver, no touching!" and Oliver will look at him and say "No touch!" We are at the farmers market this Saturday and while Crazy was putting Oliver in the stroller, there was a barking dog that was tied up to a post on the outskirts of the farmers market. Oliver took one look at the dog and said "SHUTUP!", and oddly enough the dog shut up.

I should also note that I think that Oliver may be having a hard time with enunciation, which is not uncommon for his age. I don't think he is saying sh!t, but he repeatedly says this word. I'm wondering if he means something else. Either that or Crazy and I need to scrub our mouths with soap. I remember scolding Auntie A when she was a kid, telling her that I didn't want to catch her swearing. I just hope he's not saying the four letter "S" word.

Just a few photos

Phoning and scooting on the trike.


Look how proud he is to wear his mama's boots. He walked over to the kitchen wearing my shoes. Things he does when he's with Crazy. Makes you wonder what he's teaching the kid.


It was really really really hawt this weekend. I left around 11:30 am to go start book keeping for a woman who makes dog collars for a living. Crazy and Oliver had a grand ole time eating Korean chips and then crashing hard.


Lucky for Crazy, Oliver took a 3 hour nap today. Lets just say that hawt weather and a 2 year old do not mix well?

You can only buy a home if you did not give birth to Oliver

There I said it.

Please read with a sense of humor.

So you know how long Crazy and I have been house shopping. It just seems like our life gets funnier and funnier. So we went to look at some condos this weekend in the ghetto. We really fell in love with a coop in the ghetto that is about a block from our home. This was the view out of the living room. At 1,600 sq ft, I fell in love.


I loved it despite the lovely retro kitchen, gee, where's the Brady bunch when you need em?


Do you love the vinyl flooring? I heard that its making a HUGE come back! Just you wait.

Anyhow, despite all the weird retro look of this property, we were totally on board with putting an offer on this place. I crunched the numbers, and found a comfortable offer that I wanted to put out there. Then when my agent asked me who I was going to be acquiring the loan from, guess what? Most commercial lenders do not lend to coops in California. Oh goodie! Don't worry, I'm getting to the good part.

My agent emailed the listing agent and asked some questions about why this coop had such soaring HOA fees, I mean it, its $800, but the redeeming quality of it, would be that it was affordable and in the school district that we wanted Oliver to go to school in. Anyhow the agent sent us 300 pages of stuff to studiously peruse through. I read some of it and it basically said that we needed to be approved by the board of directors of the coop. There were forms that wanted our financial history for the last two years, wanted us to give them a little bit of insight about us. As we were on the phone discussing the specifics, Crazy asked me, "Do you think they want to meet our dogs?", in horror, I said "Gee, I hope not because we will get DENIED ASAP". Crazy then said, "I can see Chia peeing on the floor in front of everyone and then Kylee barking at everyone and growling". It sent shivers down my spine.

Anyhow we read on and the board wanted our last two years worth of tax returns, wanted to know what we had in investments, what our blood type was (kidding...almost). You know, those extremely invasive questions you only tell your doctor? They wanted us to spill our guts to them, show them financial statements of our last 2 years. After we sent them our paperwork and they agreed, we would have a meet and greet. This is of course AFTER we submitted an offer and that offer was accepted. Then we'd have to deal with getting the board to accept us into their coop. Extremely exclusive, cause you know, you don't want to let in ghetto trash in the ghetto.

So the topper of course was today's phone conversations that I had with 2 lenders. These were lenders that have lent to that coop in the past. So the first conversation went a little like this:

Banker: What do you have as a down payment?
Crazy's baby mama: I'm hoping to offer 8% less than asking price so I will have 20% as my down payment.
Banker: What will you have in assets after your downpayment?
Crazy's babymama: Hm...not a whole lot....
Banker: Well, I'm sorry, we would like you to have at least 6-12 months of the mortgage payment in cash in the bank at the time of escrow.
Crazy's baby mama: Well, thanks for making me feel like a million bucks, really.

Now lets discuss the situation above. Who the heck has anything left after plopping down 20% in a down payment? How will I pay for my mortgage after I buy a property if I don't have a year's worth of mortgage payments in my bank account after I purchase? Has anyone heard of a job? Yes, apparently Crazy and I are gainfully employed and they do send these weird pieces of mail to us a few times a month with numbers on them. Our mortgage and HOA payment will be 30% of our net monthly incomes, but I guess that means NOTHING to the lender. Thanks for playing Crazy Family, but you can't buy in the ghetto. Silly ghetto kids, who do they think they are trying to BUY in the ghetto?

Okay, here's the second conversation.

Crazy's baby mama: Hello Banker #2, I'm a bit perplexed as to why you called me back, cause we just learned that we are poor ghetto kids from Banker #1.
Banker #2: Well, you don't need a year's worth of mortgage payments in the bank, we'll give you credit for it, however what is your net worth?
Crazy's baby mama: I'm not quite sure I can even quantify what my net worth is. We own a used car? Our investment account will be gone after the down payment is made...so we are worth nothing?
Banker #2: Well, the property you've chosen requires that you have a net worth of at least the value of the property...let me call the president of the board and get back to you on that....
Crazy's baby mama: Well...I thought we were ahead with having the 20% to put down on a mortgage loan, but we'll have virtually nothing except a few nickels in our retirement accounts...
Banker #2: I'll call you back after I speak to the president of the board...

I never got a call back. I'm not surprised.

Moral of the story is, that forces beyond our control are keeping us in the ghetto. Not just any ghetto, the most famous ghetto of them all. You watch the news, you'll quickly figure out what ghetto I'm talking about.

I'm having a mimosa tonight. I just can't believe that after a full year of house hunting, we've come up empty handed. I just can't shake the feeling that the reason is that we should never become home owners.

Coop in the ghetto

We were never ever meant to buy in the ghetto. Seriously. A while back I saw a condo that I absolutely loved. Concrete everywhere, and enough space for us all. But unfortunately, the property is in litigation with the builder...no bank is willing to loan on any properties in the building.

This weekend we saw a few more properties in the ghetto. Fell in love with a property that someone loved back in the 60s, never been updated. Ahhhhh, perfectly beautiful and untouched, just waiting for us to come and slowly bring it into the 21st century. It has enough space for us, and guess what? Its a coop, and as luck would have it, NO ONE is willing to lend money to a coop property. I think Crazy and I will live in this ghetto FOREVER. :-( My agent just asked the seller if he knew of a lender that would loan on this property, I'm not holding my breath. I'm just really sad. If something isn't astronomically priced, its unlendable.

I just found out this weekend that an acquaintance from college is pregnant with her 2nd child. Her daughter is 8 and goes to the same daycare as Oliver, she is there for the afterschool care. She plans on having 3 kiddos, I'm barely surviving with one.

Mother's day 2009, I was awoken at 10 am (WOW!) to some spicy Italian sausage, rice pancakes and perfectly cooked sunny side up eggs. I leisurely ate my breakfast at our dining table while Oliver kept asking to sit on my lap and help me eat my breakfast. It was truly a luxury to sleep to 10 am and not have Oliver crying and screaming. After Oliver had his share of my breakfast and his, he went down to a nap at noon. He then slept until 4 pm (wow!) and had some dinner then went to bed at 9 pm. In between all of this, I had 3 naps during the day.

Tricky little kid

I noticed something on Thursday morning that I don't think anyone is aware of.

Oliver is a master manipulator. Crazy put him down when we got inside the daycare this morning. Oliver walked past the infant room and then he attempted to walk past the toddler room, when I pulled on his shirt to redirect him to the toddler room, he went inside and noticed all the kids and then started throwing a fit. Automatically one of the daycare staff Ms. Naomi came and picked him up. The second she picked him up he stopped crying. Crazy and I both left the room as I searched in Oliver's cubby to see if there were snacks I could offer him to get him over his crying hump, when we went back into the room he was quietly sitting in Ms. Naomi's arms. She kept twisting her body so that Oliver wouldn't see that we were there and leaving.

Think about this for a second. This kid has NEVER cared that we were leaving. EVER. Why would he all of a sudden care that we were leaving? Then it dawned on me. He completely played Ms. Naomi. He saw that he would never get any preferential treatment in the toddler room, but as soon as he cried he got picked up.

I guess you can see this in two ways. He's a devious master manipulator. At home we just walk away from him and let him throw his fit. But at daycare they will pick him up and give him that extra attention he is demanding. The director doesn't play around with his antics, but her staff, they love to give in. Oliver has a really stubborn streak. I have no idea where he gets it from. :-) Really.

Tonight when he came home from daycare, Crazy was in the kitchen heating up dinner when Oliver came up and demanded a banana. When Crazy was opening up the banana, Oliver said "nana, yah!" which is new behavior, he's never really put two words together. I just remember him at the gelato counter telling the woman scooping out gelato for us "APPY!", maybe next time he will say "ice cream YAH!"

Speaking of dinner, Crazy made savory sweet potatos two nights ago. He warmed up some sweet potatos for Oliver as well as some chicken breast slices from chicken we cooked two days ago. Oliver refused the sweet potato but ate the chicken. I wonder if kids have an aversion to different colored foods at certain times in their lives. Normally I can get Oliver to eat something by forcing him to taste it, but tonight I held his head and put a bit in his mouth and he spit it out completely and refused any of it. Crazy offered him the chicken instead and he gladly ate it up. Can I also say that I made the chicken and Crazy made the sweet potato? Just saying...

Potty chairs

are big fun. This weekend we saw a potty chair for $20 and that spelled good deal to me. We brought it home and guess what? Oliver thought it was GREAT fun to wear the toilet seat on his head. I don't know when we will start potty training, but it probably won't be in the next two months.

I had no idea there was a pee pee guard. I think that there will be lots of FUN when we have to actually star potty training. Lets hope that when we start potty training, we'll have a 2nd bathroom. I don't want to potty train in our tiny bathroom.

Everyone keeps telling us that the market is down and at an all time low, however every time I look for properties in the ghetto, I just don't see it. If it wasn't that we have to stay in this school district, we would have purchased a home already. But thanks to the poor test scores in the ghetto, we have to stay in this area. We're not even talking great homes, we are talking about condos with astronomical monthly fees. :-(

My mom visited this past week. She came up the night after Oliver's birthday. Her stay was thankfully uneventful, except it made me feel like I was 12 again. I don't really know what it is about mothers, but I hope that when Oliver is an adult, I will be able to let go and treat him as such.

We drove to LA this weekend to drop my mom off. We came back today with enough time to do a load of laundry, make dinner (asparagus and shrimp stirfry), go grocery shopping and make some soup for tomorrow. Oliver got a bath and went down nicely at 9 pm. To say that the past 2 nights have been painful are an understatement.

Oliver is a creature of schedule and to actually not be put in his crib with his noisemaker and heater was a bit unsettling for him. He cried and cried and cried, flipped his little body back and forth, slammed his head on the headboard a few times...ugh. We slept on edge Friday night and this continued to Saturday night. He refused to eat while we were in LA and just nibbled at everything. So he was cranky in the car ride home, but refused to eat anything we offered him. When we got home he asked me for food and I gave him a bowl of oatmeal mixed with applesauce. He ate the entire bowl then had some asparagus and shrimp stirfry after he had some triffle for dessert.

Something we need to keep in mind for the future is that we should always bring his oatmeal and applesauce with us. If he can at least have his regular breakfast, perhaps he will eat lunch and dinner? We also forgot his blanket and green leapfrog frog. Yeah I know, we are unprepared for life in general.