-annabelle has a gash out of the left side of her cheek. this is the second time ive let her out of the cat room and and her face is like this. theyve been getting along for hte most part for years; ive never seen this level of a wound from a cat fight. im glad when we move we wont have to lock them up in a single room anymore and they will have plenty of space to hang out at night.
– i actually bought two sundresses yesterday because it is too hot in the house to wear pants. im pretty sure this is the first time i have voluntarily worn a dress in like, 20 years or something. i honestly cant even remember the last time i owned a regular dress just for wearing.
– the house inspection went really really well on saturday. it was fun being able to spend a few hours at the house. there was nothing majorly wrong with the house at all – just all little things that can be fixed over time. terence is going to make an amendment to our offer to request the seller to fix these little things, but if they reject it no big deal. i didnt really want to even ask for any of it, but paul wanted to at least see if we could get them to fix it, which i guess makes sense. i dunno, for some reason i feel wrong asking a seller to pay out of pocket to fix little things when they arent making a penny on the sale of the house. on the other hand, all the things that need fixing are things in the basement that came about because the basement was self-finished and not done by a professional, so a few things were done wrong (electrical and plumbing). so i guess it would make sense to correct your own work.
– i met our next door neighbors on saturday. the couple is al(l?)ison and josh. they have a son, Landon, one week younger than Lucas, and a baby girl (didn’t get her name). we had previously met the girl across the street. they are a young couple that just got a golden retriever puppy (no kids). mom (and maybe steph) are probably the only ones that really get how excited this makes me. ive never ever had any neighbors before, and here right by me i will have two other young couples. i feel like a girl in a chick lit novel, already imagining all the fun things my new friends and i will do together.
– yesterday after brunch (which sarah came to, yay) and after kohls shoping, paul and i worked on packing up the basement. first i sat there staring at my mess of a desk feeling overwhelmed. i did end up getting all of my desk (except the breakables that will have to be wrapped and packed separately) packed up. the basement is the most daunting part of the packing, imo. it is where we have the most *stuff*.
-a gravity/gyro bowl does not prevent cheerios from flying everywhere when dropped. tipping research still being conducted by the subject.
– for the second time this week, lucas has somehow managed to crawl into the baby einstein and is actually playing with the stuff in it.
Author: allycat143
i get so excited when lucas learns something new. lately he must have had some kind of brain spurt because he has picked up a bunch of new things in like a week. i need to do better at writing them all down so i can remember later (so that when lauren asks “when did lucas do…, i’ll actually know the answer.) so here are the ones i can remember off the top of my head:
-he suddenly became interested in colors. instead of calling everything yellow, he has started repeating back all the new colors and can correctly identify a color about 1/3rd of the time.
– just now he had a runny nose and we are playing outside. he left and went inside the house found a roll of papertowels, pulled off a couple, wiped his nose, wadded them up, and put them in the trash. he has done this before with asking for a kleenex, but this time he actually went into the house by himself and got his own.
– this morning when he was helping me do the laundry by putting the wet clothes into the dryer, he saw a bando shirt and said “dada”. then a minute later when i handed him one of my shirts, he held it up and said “mama;” so apparently not only can he identify a clothing item (sock), but he recognizes who wears what.
– he’s been doing the couple word sentences for awhile now (around a week after his 2yr doc visit it started) by adding an adjective to a noun. only two words together, tho, i cant get him to do 3.
– he heard a train this morning and called it a train. i didn’t know he’d ever really heard one before, but he identified the sound w/o seeing the train.
– i stopped keeping track of his word list when he got to about 50. he picks up new words insanely easily now.
My brilliant idea of covering the windows with sheets was in vain – lucas still woke up at 545am despite the room finally being dark. i tried to keep him relatively quiet in the room for an hour, but being in the dark room was making it really hard for me to wake up and deal with him, so i finally took him outside to play until others (meaning paul since the others didnt wake up until 9am+) woke up. after a trip to target (nope, i still dont like starbucks), we were finally on the road to boston harbor around 10.
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the ferry boat was a much more pleasant boat ride. we had dramamine on hand, and the boat was remotely as rocky, and lucas and i spent the 30 min ride at the front of the bow with the cool wind in our faces and him pointing out every “big boat” we passed.
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On Georges Island we went to Fort Warren. It was a very pretty day and being on the island made the temp much cooler than it had been the past few days. The Fort was pretty neat and we were able to wander around all through it.
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By the time we got done, tho, Lucas was way past his naptime and was really cranky. Sadly, Rachel had to catch her bus back to New York afterwards, too. I’m SO GLAD Rachel was able to join us the past two days – it was really fun having her with us. Now we are home chilling, and will prob just hang out the rest of the day and just go out to dinner or something this evening. Despite work schedules and baby schedules, we actually managed to hit up all the major highlights of Boston this week!
Not much to write about today – it was a chill day. We hung out at the house while Steph was at work. At noon we walked to the playground they have a few streets down and Lucas got to play on everything for an hour before we headed back for naptime. Having a playground right down the street made me really excited about our new house where we will have a playground across the street to play on all the time. We took an awesome 2.5 hr nap which was great after him not napping for like three days in a row. steph, paul (Dr Duff gave him a pass at going to the meeting in Cape Cod tonight), lucas, and i went to a nice korean restaurant for dinner. i was surprised that they had quite a few white patrons and their service and food was excellent. boston is a lot more ethnically diverse than georgia.
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Tomorrow we will head to Cape Cod for the Bando competitions!
Below is the email from Terence explaining the current sitch with the house.
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As of right now, Bank of America has determined that for the purpose of our deal, fair market value (FMV) is $166,000. 88% of FMV is the lowest “net” amount FHA will allow Bank of America to “net” so that’s the same as the absolute bottom line.
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Here’s how that would work with our current deal:
1. 88% of $166,000 is $146,080
2. Contract price: $160,000
3. Concessions: $5,700 in closing costs
4. 6% Real Estate Brokerage Fees on $160,000 is $9,600
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$160,000 – $5,700 – $9,600 = $144,700 which is $1,380 less than the absolute bottom line FHA guidelines specify.
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There are other fees that further lower this number that I’m not able to calculate at this time such as prorated taxes that the seller is responsible for and HOA prorations and that kind of stuff.
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What this means is if they hold us to their absolute bottom line, we either have to raise the sales price by $1,380 or lower the closing costs by $1,380 in order for them to net their $146,080.
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Technically, they have the right to force us to lower our closing costs to 1% of the mortgage amount which would amount to be $1544 in closing costs because per FHA guidelines, they allow 1% of the mortgage amount to be used towards closing costs provided the buyer is using FHA financing. In that case, they would be netting $2,766 above their minimum net. Unfortunately that doesn’t mean we can drop the sales price by another $2,766 because the contract specifies $160K as the agreed price.
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So where we stand as of right now is we’re waiting for the attorney’s office to put together a preliminary HUD-1 settlement statement which shows all the numbers, what is owed, what the prorations are, etc. that ultimately shows the bottom line for both sides of the transaction. Once drafted, they send that in to Bank of America. A negotiator/Loss Mitigator there will review the statement and either approve it or come back with the demands of us having to make the numbers work by either increasing the sales price or lowering the closing costs. They may also invoke the 1% rule. They may not too, it really depends on the negotiator’s mood that day. I know that sounds horrible but that’s the way it is.
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How long this can take is a crapshoot. It can be done next week or in 3 weeks or longer before we get an approval. Hopefully it’s sooner rather than later. Because the Seller has hired that attorney’s office to represent them and interact with the bank, the other agent and I don’t have any right to contact the bank directly as they won’t speak to us since we’re not formally authorized. Only the attorney’s office is. So we’re both in contact with them and at last contact they’re on top of it and have established a good open channel of communication with the bank so hopefully that expedites things.
Feeling much better today. I slept in until 10; paul got up super early as usual tho 😦 . We took Lucas to the Museum of Science, which was great because he could run around wherever he wanted and touch anything he wanted and all we had to do was keep tabs on him. It made the day much more relaxed and kept him very entertained. Plus, stephanie’s friend works there and got us in for free which was a HUGE help since we need every penny to buy a house.
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last night stephanie and i got a cake for paul’s birthday and the guy let steph go behind the counter and decorate it herself. she drew a whale on it to commemorate paul’s awful birthday.
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i ordered a sweet tea at dunkin donuts (which are more prevalent than waffle house) and it was awful. they definitely dont know how to make sweet tea. there are also little pizza joints evvverrryywhere.
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lucas never napped. then we went to go pick up stephanie. paul drove her to work this morning in hours of traffic and then we had massive traffic trying to go and get her and get home. the original plan was to go drive-by sightseeing after we got her, but by then paul was back into a horrible mood so we went straight home. now we are ordering indian food! yay!!!!
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terence called today as well. the house appraisal came back. it appraised at 166 which is awesome for us. apparently we still hafta convince them of something, but i dont understand what. i should probably email terence about what the next wait step is/time frame, but ill do that later.
Well flying to Boston was even more exhausting than usual airport flying. I was hoping there would be little TVs on the plane to keep lucas somewhat distacted, but there weren’t (this is why I only ever fly international), so paul had to deal with lucas constantly kicking the seat of the guy in front of him, crying when paul made him stop, and talking loudlyfor two+ hours. Walking thru airports meant dragging a car seat around with us and having lucas randomly flop over on the ground being silly rather than just walking.
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stephanie’s house is really cool. it is sooo much like my house in london (only double the size). she also actually has more pets than i do (ok well they belong to her roommate, but theyre in the house with her).
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This morning we got up bright and early at 5am. Why the hell would we get up at 5am you ask? BECAUSE THAT IS WHEN THE SUN RISES IN BOSTON! an hour and a half earlier than it does in the georgia!! at least this gave us ample time to drive to Gloucester, an hour north of Boston where we caught a boat out to sea to go whale watching.
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Not a good plan. Paul got really seasick. I didn’t know he got seasick so I didn’t bring any medicine for him. So he spent the whole time feeling super miserable. And by whole time i mean 4.5 hours! they said it would be 3-4 hours which didn’t sound like long at the time, but when one of you is sick and youre yet again dealing with a toddler than wants to run around and climb on everything but can’t because he could fall overboard so requires not only careful watching, but *hand holding* most of the time, it gets old fast. and oh yeah, youre out to sea and there’s no getting off the ride now.
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so now that im done bitching, here are the positives. they don’t really have those awful accents here, and everyone is really nice. seeing the whales was really cool. they are insanely huge! even seeing the top of their backs from far away you dont realize how freakin big they are until one was right up next to the boat. we saw a bunch of humpbacks and one other that i forget the name of.
So I’m working in the kitchen and I look in on Lucas who is sitting at the table eating his food and saying “mmm”. I go back across the kitchen, and wait a minute, here is lucas’s cereal bowl over here on the floor, so what is he eating? I go back in the dining room, and he is sitting at the table with the cat food bowl! He went in the cat room and took one of their bowls, brought it to the table, sat in a chair, and began eating it.
The Seller accepted our offer!
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House was listed at 170k. Our offer was 160k+closing costs, so really $154.
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The seller accepted our offer, they were considering dropping their list price to 160k anyway since they hadn’t had any foot traffic. but now it has to go to the bank for approval. Should go out today, and hopes are to hear back in about 10 days which would be June 1.
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we found out that the seller’s mortgage is an FHA loan (easier to deal with) through Bank of America.This means that they will only pay 1% of the closing costs (around $1600 of the 5700 estimate). We also found out that the bank will typically approve up to 84% of the appraised value of the home, so our offer of 160 should be fine as long as the house doesn’t appraise for over 190k. Terence will find out if an appraisal or something similar has already been done on the house to get an idea of what it would be. At a rough guess from what I’ve seen online, I’m guessing 167k area.
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we are trying to get the utilities turned on for a day for the home inspection, hopefully before we leave for boston, but if not we are going to try to change the due diligence clause to be june 1-10 when we get back. shouldn’t be an issue.
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that’s all for now, cuz im heading to lunch with sarah. ill post more about the house itself later. i think i might go buy some uhaul boxes and yell at paul’s mom a bit today, too.
lucas loves it. he just ate 3 slices!! i mean i ordered a smaller pizza than usual, so each piece is smaller than the usual slice, but still. 3 pieces!!
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doc update: weight 28.8lbs (61%), height 38.25″ (95%), head 19.5″
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ally-cat 