Awesomeness Abounds

News is best when it's good, and my news is awesome. Also, there are several pieces of awesome news, which is always better than just one piece of awesome news. If you only read this far, your takeaway should be "Roches are Winners", because things are hot for us this month.

Awesome news #1: New House
After suffering through some disappointment in this awful real estate market, we managed to make good on someone else's misfortune for a change ;). Long story short, we bought a house in West Seattle.



To those who don't know Seattle, West Seattle is a peninsula about 5 miles south of where we live now. On the pictured map, if you can find "Phinney" and the green arrow (click on the picture to make it big), those are the old & new locations, respectively.

To those who know Seattle and don't live in West Seattle, sorry to abandon you. We were looking for a long long time and the recurring thought of Graham (and future children's) best interest came to mind. West Seattle is a nice place, we get to live across the street from Lincoln Park, and we have tons of friends with kids out there.

To those living in West Seattle, it's on.

Our house is right across the street from Lincoln Park, whose amenities include a playground, baseball fields, lots of trails, a promenade on the coast of Puget Sound, and a saltwater pool. So, if you walk out the front door of the new house, you just have to cross the street and you're in the park. Pretty sweet.

Awesome news #2: Graham is 6 months old!

Our best boy is 6 months old. I'll have more on this when we do the ritual dump off the camera, but he's doing great. Every girl's crazy about a sharp dressed Graham, and he fits the bill consistently.

Awesome news #3: We sold the vacant lot!
The whole purpose of this journal, for those who have been keeping up, was to document the construction of a new house on a vacant lot we owned. That quickly turned into a nightmare and we made a decision to sell the lot some months ago. Since then, it's been heartbreak city as the market seemed completely disinterested. Lo, behold! There's someone who yesterday signed up to buy it for more than our asking price. So, yay! We not only get out from under the debt, but we'll have money to put into the new place to tie up some loose ends and build a deck out back. Things aren't 100% assured, but they are 99.999%. We'll have a final signing, and a fat deposit into our checking account, on April 7. Pray for us.

Awesome news #4: Lords of the North rule
Our band (me and 2 other guys, not Elissa and Graham) played our first show last Saturday to rave reviews. Pat (bass/singer) has a lot of industry experience and got us in the Seattle Times' hot weekend happenings section for the Friday prior, and we sold out the hall where we played. It was great, people both cheered and jeered me because I was smiling the whole time we were smashing out our songs. If you haven't heard the music yet, some of our recorded songs are on http://myspace.com/thelordsofthenorth. For those that have heard us, there are pictures from the show up there.

If you like knowing I'm happy, this is the best we've been doing since before our wedding. Things are honky donkey in Seattle for the Roches. Hip hip hooray!

Overdue! Months 4 & 5

Sorry for the delay, here's the latest on our best boy...

The last two months brought him from Xmas to last Wednesday. He took his first plane trip and caught his first serious cold (maybe even pneumonia!) on our trip back to Philadelphia to see the Roches. The highlight of that trip was having all the grandkids in the same room at the same time, though I'm not sure if we got all the kids in the same shot at the same time. You'll get the idea.

More recently, Graham is thrilling us with his daily accomplishments. Yesterday, for example, I saw him roll over (tummy to back) for the first time ever. Likely stemming from his pride for that achievement, he then started essentially talking to us. While sitting in my lap facing Elissa, he would howl at her and then do his little crackling sound (imagine someone imitating crinkling cellophane, that's his noise) when she turned to say hi. He is his own biggest fan, I think. Month 5 also brought him his first swimming outing, the water was a little cold for his liking.

Here are the pictures, sports fans!

	Month 4
	Month 5

Lot for Sale

I had the lot listed for sale yesterday. Here's the ad on a local real estate site.

We're giving it an initial price of $399,950, hoping that it catches on like wildfire and is bid up by eager beavers. At the selling price, we'll be making $125k over what we paid, which will help open up a higher price range for when we look to purchase.

Speaking of which, we found a house that we really like but bad timing will likely put it out of reach for us. It's nestled in a park north of the city, and accessible only by a single stretch of road in and out of the little alcove. The day that we made a verbal offer magically coincided with an offer from another buyer who had already entered a contingent deal on the property. Today I filed an official offer, to serve as a fallback to the contingent deal.

"Have you ever seen the movie 'Brazil'?"

On the housing front, I've been immersed in an infinitely-layered onion of a problem since September or so. Lo siento for the lack of updates on our house/lot, but a fake legal restriction had me scared to publicize anything of specific substance. What am I talking about? Oh boy.

It all started when I visited the 'permit coach' at Seattle's Department of Planning and Development. I showed up to answer the question: "What do I need to do to clear the land for a permit?", with the specific plan to either build on the lot or sell the lot to someone who will. The permit coach, a reactionary land use attorney, immediately put me on high alert because the lot wasn't registered with the city. It turned out that the prior owner of the property did his job of splitting the property in the eyes of the county, for tax reasons, but never followed up with the city to formalize the boundaries. That caused uppity lawyer to tell me that there was a good chance that I didn't own the lot I've been paying down since 2005. I asked the lawyer, "Have you ever seen the movie 'Brazil'?". She hadn't.

OK, time to get a lawyer. I hired a real estate attorney who echoed all the concerns on the issue. His advice, after a 3-hour $750 consult, was to legally split the lot with the city. That was fine with me. What ensued was insane. He told me to keep out of any news reporting or refinancing of the lot because his design was to run up a huge bill and then sue the prior owner of the lot, who's responsible for the proper subdivision of the property, so I'm 'made whole'. In the end, which you'll read about in a couple paragraphs, I asked the dude, "Have you ever seen the movie 'Brazil'?". He replied, with a chuckle, "Yeah, years ago.".

I paid $250 to meet with a land use specialist who told me to submit a survey. After that, I called an attorney at the land use office who told me that my current assets (an expensive survey and an additionally expensive soil report) were sufficient. Then I showed up at the city office to submit that nonsense, and was told that I needed a separate document, which was essentially an annotated copy of the existing survey but would cost $1000 to file, was required.

Then I got ornery ammo from the surveyor. It was actually like a divine intervention. The city's office is so impossible to deal with, the surveyor gave me advice to avoid the $1000 filing rather than take my $1000. His advice was to follow up with the title insurance agency that secured the purchase of the lot. They never make mistakes, even though they're kind of dumb. Long story short, I contacted them and they took the issue to someone at the city's DPD who was the superior to everyone else I was dealing with.

Well guess what? That guy notified me via informal means that the whole hubbub about the non-existent lot boundaries was just mongering on the city's part. None of the activities defined above were necessary. Not at all. I broke ties with the shady lawyer, the city's incompetent land use office, and a thousand pounds of mess was lifted off my shoulders. Our decision to proceed from here is specifically to sell the lot and move to an existing home, rather than building on the lot. I'm now pursuing a "legal building letter", which essentially formalizes the research done by whom I can imagine is the only person at the DPD that can walk and sing "Jamie's Cryin'" at the same time. Oh yeah, that costs $1000. In one of the last three sentences I shared with that guy, I asked "Have you ever seen the movie 'Brazil'?". He laughed and said "Yup.". And I replied, "Exactly.".

Sorry, hopeful friends and family. I've already had it up to my bushy eyebrows in ding dongs. Rather than submit my growing family to 2+ years of leeching lawyers, artistic architects, and corrupt contractors, our decision is to sell the lot and buy a nice house where we'll live until we're old and ugly. As much as I'd love to build the house of my dreams, the only way we could afford it would be to liquidate the lot, and then the whole topic becomes instantly moot.

What does that mean for you? Nothing really. You'll have to ask me for my address again for next year's Xmas cards, and you'll have to follow a redirect for this blog since our address won't be '131 NW 50th St'. In the meantime, keep looking for more Graham pictures and news on our complex existence. Better mustache pictures, soon.

Nurse Nose

Elissa leaned to give hungry Killer a kissy, but he had different plans.

We've Encountered the #4 Al Qaeda Operative

His name is Mohammed Al Graham, a.k.a. "The Killer Graham".

He was discovered in a spider hole in the wasteland on the border of Afghanistan and Pakistan, sucking on the side of one of his hands. Fear not, he's in custody and responding well to breast-milk-boarding. He's already divulged the formula for Similac and told us the precise location of Osama bin Laden.

He's 1/4 years old!

Killer Graham Roche has hit the 3 month mark like a giant gorilla hits a bunch of bananas. He's right on track with most of the head/hands/eyes/ears milestones, but he's destroying the sizing convention for kids' clothes. We just got back for shopping for 6-9 month clothes, because he's stretching the 3-6 month pajamas. Meanwhile, he's not really a fattie like you'd expect. He's just very efficient at applying his food to make his bones longer (or something).

This month Graham totally discovered his hands. He's grabbing at everything, working on his precision. He's also taken to the 'Slinky' jingle (what walks downstairs, alone or in pairs) and the song from the old 'Perfection' game (push the plunger down, set the timer, fit the pieces in place, don't be slow). If you had to rank him among the other babies we know, he qualifies as a giggler.

That said, enjoy this month's pictures!!!! Link!!!

Fit Like a Fiddle

Graham had his long-awaited 2 month appointment today, and he's, in the doctor's overused terms, 'solid'.

Significant to the last post claiming his bigness, since October 15 he grew 2.5 inches, gained 4.25 lbs, and added 4cm to his head circumference. Where he was in the 65 to 75 percentile in height & weight last time, he's now a 'solid' 90th percentile.

Here's what Graham doesn't like: shots. He arrived at the office asleep, and started crying when we got him naked. Right when the doctor walked in, he was a flirty angel. All nice and everything. He stayed that way after he left, and gave the nurse with the needles a little goo goo. Then she stuck three needles into his thighs and he went into tomato mode. He turned red from the top of his head to the base of his tummy like a thermometer on a hot day. The crying didn't really stop until about 25 minutes ago, so we're talking about almost 6 hours of cranky.

He's fine now. We're cooking dinner while he's on the table in his car seat with the hiccups. For all intents and purposes, outside of the screaming we'll hear when we tear off his band-aids, he's unphased.

By the way, the doctor in the photo is not me, it's the real doctor. We have a couple friends who take their kids there too, and all of us get the same 'solid' keyword to describe our healthy children. Solid.

Graham is Big

The boy is big. Month #2 spanned from Halloween to Thanksgiving, and he trooped through the month slowly learning how and when to sleep, and, more importantly, how to smile.

Graham's favorite song is one that I made up over the course of a couple smile fits. It goes like this, and you make him rub his hands together like a mad scientist for the 'yes yes' parts.:

Sittin' on a rocket (poke him in the booty)
With money in your pocket (stick your finger in his fake-pocket)
Singin' yes yes yes yes yes yes yes (wringing his aforementioned hands)

Ticklin' your tummy (tickle his tummy)
And taking back my money (stick your finger in aforementioned fake-pocket)
Thinkin' yes yes yes yes yes yes yes (wring hands again)

[Repeat]

Here's the link to the pictures from the month. There are a lot of repeats, but they're all cute like buttons.

"Graham Grunts"

Boy Roche's latest nickname is "Graham Grunts". He grunts when he's happy, he grunts when he's sad, he grunts while he's eating and when he craps his pants. There's an increasing ratio of other sounds to his grunt count, but the grunts are winning by a mile. On that note, here are links to his week 3 and 4 slideshows. From here forward, I'm classifying his progress by months. Click on the links to see the respective weeks (1 thru 4):
	Week 1
	Week 2
	Week 3
	Week 4