Graham's First Two Weeks on Earth

We have all the photos of Killer Graham up on flickr, so you can look at his huge biceps in a slideshow. Enjoy!

Week 1

Week 2

Killer Graham vs. Big Shirley

In the orange corner, standing one foot 9 inches and weighing in at 8 and 3/4 pounds... Hailing from the mean streets of Seattle, Washington... Killer Graham Roche!

And the champion, at 2 feet 5 inches and weighing a solid 45 pounds... Pulled out of a steaming car in downtown Everett, Washington... Big Ass Shirley!!!

Shake paws and come out fighting...

Success! Graham Lucas Lives!

Thursday came and went without a hitch. The c-section surgery was without complication, and resulted in a healthy Elissa and a beautiful and sturdy Graham. He's a delight, for real.

The movies below were taken immediately after he came out. There's an initial video where he's covered in blood and jizz, thank me later for sparing you the convulsions.

Since we've had him, he's been 50% delight and 50% devil. The first night, he slept no longer than 30 minutes or so, none of which was outside of Elissa or my hands. 2nd night, angel. Third night, angel. Last night, things were so bad I felt I had to try every trick in the book to avoid criminal neglect charges. He wouldn't eat, cried for almost 7 hours non-stop, and we eventually had to feed him some formula just to keep his fluids up. After his first suckle, though, he's back on the good foot. I'm confident there's nothing he can do that will perplex us similarly, until he starts stealing bikes.

Please pardon the audio on the movies. When he was handed to me, I said something akin to "Welcome to Earth, Killer" and cried like a sissy not knowing what to say until we got back to the hospital room. Also, the 2nd video ends with the nurse saying "OK. This is the most dangerous...", and I can't for the life of me recall what was so dangerous. Maybe she knew he has the kung fu kick to end all kung fu kicks, and was about to say "OK. This is the most dangerous set of feet the human race has ever seen." Time will definitely tell.

Today is the Big Day!

After the longest year of our lives, today is the big day for Elissa and me. We're due at the hospital in an hour, and at 11:30ish, we should have the baby in our hands. Thanks to everyone for presents, prayers, and patience. Elissa's really happy to be transitioning from pregnant lady to Mom, and I'm happy for her (and for myself of course).

We'll be in the hospital from now until Sunday or Monday, and I'll be updating everyone as news comes through. Fingers crossed!

Killer Graham Lives!

Elissa had her bi-weekly doctor appointment today and we got an ultrasound of the baby's progress because he's measuring big. To be brief, today's findings have the baby's head circumference in the 95th percentile, and he's already estimated at 7.25 lbs with 5 weeks left before the due date.

That said, all the advice is for a scheduled c-section, which we've scheduled for 9/27 at 11AM. There's a chance that the labor will start early, but I'm jazzed about the date. 9 == 3*3, and 27 == 3*3*3. That's bad-ass, I don't care what you think. Plus, 9/27 is the first date in the new VH tour, so put that in your pipe and cry for me.

Regardless, the ultrasound was sadly mostly 2D. The two 3D pictures we got were of Graham's face (he looks like Melissa) and his undercarriage (he looks like me). No cause for alarm on anything else. I got to ask all the questions I had about c-sections, since our hippie birth classes deal mainly with the downside of modern medicine's contribution to birthing. Our doc did a good job of conveying to me that everything about giving birth is torture.

It seems that the process of picking how you have a baby is similar to how you decide how to remove a fish hook from your hand. There's a specific physical limitation that constrains your options to only those involving a lot of pain. Nothing is a cakewalk when it comes to getting that kid out, but we're taking one of the easier routes. Given the size of the cranium, the "ring of fire" we learned about in the hippie class would burn down the whole hospital for Elissa.

The countdown is on, the drum roll has started. 4 weeks from today, you know this.

Born Lucky, indeed

Be careful what you wish for. You might get it all at the same time.

Such is the case with me. I've been waiting for the wonderful Van Halen to reunite since the day my brother Dan and I figured out that Sammy Hagar wouldn't hold a candle to his predecessor. I've also been waiting for my whole adult life to spawn a descendant, and the aforementioned Graham Lucas Roche is the answer to those prayers. As (bad) luck would have it, these two blessed events are happening almost simultaneously. I'm not dismayed as much as I am in awe that the possibility for such overlap is uncanny in the grand scheme of the universe.

Had I not been expecting the coming of the chosen one, my master plan would make me the envy of my pathetic peers. There are a fistful of dates on the VH tour that will inevitably serve as the highlight shows. Their first show in Charlotte, NC, of course. NYC, LA, Chicago, definitely. Indianapolis, since DLR hails from Bloomington, likely. That said, a friend and I were toying with Expedia to find a round-trip flight that would have us flying out of and back into Seattle, with a bender and a VH show in between, within 24ish hours. We had a few of these worked out, the west coast shows were definitely easier to accommodate.

Add the price of the event to the mix, though, and there's a really good chance I wouldn't be able to do this more than once. Floor seats, really the only seats worth buying, are $150 (not including tax & fees). The airplane would be anywhere from $100 to $400. Add another $200 in sundries (car rental, beer, food, hotel) and we're up to almost $700 a person for the outing. Again, I don't think I'd do this more than once.

It's all water under the bridge, though. The shows themselves run far higher than the amount I'd be willing to pay for any other act on the green earth. There's a show in Seattle, which will sadly be a non-highlight, yet to be scheduled, and another show in Portland for 12/1/07. We're thinking about making a "Graham's First Travel Adventure" out of the Portland experience, more on that later.

Meet my new friend Big Shirley

She's here! Welcome the latest addition to the Seattle Roche crew: Big Shirley.





Last weekend, Elissa was out of town and I was home totally by myself for probably the first time since I got Maxine in 2000. I went from shelter to shelter looking for a good sized, nice, young dog, and happened upon Big Shirley up in Everett. I immediately fell in love. Who wouldn't? No one wouldn't, in fact, which is why I had to wait until Thursday and then enter a drawing (it was only me and one other lady) to get her. The cops up there pulled her out of a car on a hot day and no one claimed her, so she's all ours now.

After grabbing her from the vet this morning (spay & deformed 5th claw removed), we took her around town and for a trip around the lake. She's surprisingly well-behaved. A lot of energy, but someone taught her what to do when the humans mean business. She sits when asked, and always throws a high-five once she's on her ass. Now she just runs laps around our dining room table and acts nice.

We're taking her camping next week where she'll learn more of the ropes. I think she's going to be great. She's docile as heck, no aggression toward dogs and no fear of people. Good choice. Thanks!

Well damn it.

So today, Maxine got put down.

She was living high on the hog since her diagnosis. I bet she consumed more calories in a day that most of my friends in the same timeframe. We pulled out all the stops. One day, Eazy's work bought a 'sack' of Egg McMuffins for a class on not spitting on children, and she came home with like 6 of them. Pardon me, they were Sausage McMuffins (the cousin). Every day for a week, I'd tear up one and throw its pieces on the back patio for M to find and eat. Add to that about a hundred pounds a week of restaurant leftovers and you can just see her teasing other dogs at the park about how their lives suck it.

Yesterday, Melissa came home from work and Maxine didn't come into the house for her usual obnoxious greeting, nor did she get all wiggly for her walk around the lake. Elissa called me in tears, so I rushed home to find M keeping the weight off her tumor-side leg and not able to run more than a few steps before returning to a subtle limp. We made an appointment for the vet, fake-hoping that there's something they could do.

This morning, I tried feeding her half a sausage and she couldn't slink through the dog door because of the weakness in her leg. I knew she wouldn't make it to the end of the day, and Eazy had plans to head out of town for a family funeral. So I didn't say anything to Elissa, and, after getting off work early, found M in the same sad state.

Anyway, to cut to the chase, we brought M in at 3:30. We waited for a while for the doc. Maxine's whole thorax was full of fluid, and her x-ray from the last visit is a legend at the office. Her heart was beating visibly, on the opposite side of her body from where it belonged because of the size of the tumor. They gave her a sedative and I ran through her favorite routines ('pick which hand has the treat', "Where's Donnie Chubb?", the high five, "Gertie Gertie Gertie", and some others) as it set in, to keep her tail-stump wiggling. Then the vet came back in and, having no luck on veins in both her back legs, shot some poison into her front leg and she was dead, right in front of us with her last high-five still in my hand, in about another 90 seconds.

It was sad as hell, I have a derivative of diaper rash around my eyes and nose from crying so much. At the end, I said something like "Now we have a dead dog, this sucks. Let's split.", and me and Melissa headed home in silence. I folded my clean laundry and we started joking about how I'm going to get a bloodhound while Elissa is out with her family. We talked later about how we both independently secretly thought it would have been fun to have pictures of Maxine and Killer Graham before she kicked it, but that won't happen. My little black bird is just a funny story now.

Long Live the M. If you're bored and have some time to kill, read this.

Burning Down the House

The house construction is on hold. Really long story...

We fixed up the old house and put it on the market using Redfin, the new whizbang discount real estate agency. Saving the litany of complaints for those truly interested, suffice it to say that those people couldn't sell air conditioners to Arizona. The house sat and sat with no attention (at least none that I heard about).

A month into it, 3 weeks ago Monday, we went with our friend Diane to take over the listing. She's great. We got immediate attention, but the vacant lot next door has scared off multiple potential buyers. As much assurance, colloquial and legal, as I can promise, it's still a risky proposition. We have to wait for 'the right buyer' and we'll be rolling around in money.

No we won't. Reality set in and we're not going to be able to pay off the lot with our profit on the house. Truth be told, the $40k I put into repairs earned me nothing. At the current price, we'll still owe something like $75k on the lot, and anything else people require of the price just adds to our debt.

That said, it's important to note that our architect-built house is now very far from our reach. The custom build process would push us way out of our budget, potentially into a worse spot than the one that forced us to consider the process in the first place.

Our decision now is heavily in the court of Timberland Homes. They build modular homes, where they take your order (marginally customizing their existing floor plans) and build the house on their own lot. When the house is 75% done, they cut it up, load it on trailers, and drop it on your foundation with a crane. Despite the yawn prompted by their literature, they actually do some pretty cool work. Additionally, they're extremely flexible with their floorplans. The examples they have can be reconfigured to face our view, and there are tons of options that will cost/save money at every decision. We're excited, the difference in cost between this and the custom design is about $200k.

Stay tuned on this. It all seems too good to be true, and we're not going to press with the Timberland people until we have an offer in the financing stage for the old house. There's still a possibility that I scrap the whole deal and sell the house + the lot to some developer and we move into a nice house somewhere else.

Baby Health is a Go!

Everything is going great with the baby. Knock wood for us, but we seem to be having the template experience with this pregnancy. Not to take credit for anything, Elissa is a heck of a gal. She's getting uncomfortable and self-conscious, but she's walking the 3-mile Green Lake loop every day and she looks great.

Last night we went to a baby class to learn about emergency pre-term labor and all the early gross stuff. When they talked about the water breaking, they asked us to remember a mnemonic to help with what we tell the doctor. You're supposed to remember the time, amount, color, and odor of any liquid that comes out. I should have been dry-heaving at the thought of a variably-odorous liquid spilling from my wife's up-there, but I was just hungry for tacos. Mmmm, I love a good taco.