THE RAMONS

Lucas got a new hat a couple weeks ago, and it does well at keeping the sun out of his eyes. He’s pretty good about not pulling it off when he’s outside and sufficiently distracted by his surroundings. At the risk of reducing the cute factor of the shot above, I should disclose that he’s not actually sleeping–just hiding his eyes from the brightness.

Lindsay’s parents visited a couple weekends ago, and we made time to catch a Royals loss–they didn’t disappoint. It was pretty windy and chilly, but Lucas seemed to have a great time. I think he enjoyed looking at such a large expanse of grass and focusing on things so far away. Actually he spent about 4 innings sleeping in the car and another 2.5 innings eating peas or something, but he enjoyed the 2.5 innings he actually saw.

Here are a couple shots of Lucas wearing one of those souvenir baseball hats they serve ice cream in.

This is how behind we are in posting.  The photo of Lucas’ first tooth seemed outdated, so instead of a “first tooth” photo you get a “first (few) teeth” photo. To be fair, they all came within about two weeks.

Lindsay made this cool bow-tie and suspenders outfit for Lucas so he could dress like the cool guys at church. He’s way more stylish than his parents, that’s for sure.

This is a shot of John and Lucas sizing each other up. John feels threatened because, according to him, there’s only room for one dapper dude in our church.

Here are a couple photos from our Easter church service. Lindsay brought Lucas forward along with the other children to hear the Easter story. He was wearing a snazzy vest–a gift from his Grandma Lois.

We had a somewhat unconventional Easter feast at Grinders (below), a downtown restaurant that’s only a couple blocks away from our Sunday morning church services. The restaurant was featured on the Food Network at one point. Here is a video of it if you have the time or interest. The gentleman in the third picture is from Hungary, and he cooks a special meal on Monday nights.  He was a big Lucas fan.

Lucas, Rocco, and I have enjoyed seeing everything turning green and growing and the sweet smells that accompany it.

A photograph I saw on Pinterest a few months ago inspired me to take these photos.  I didn’t have a Pinterest account at the time (I just enjoyed looking around), so I didn’t repin it and now I can’t find it.  This bothers me, but I guess it served its purpose to inspire.

Living next to a park is so convenient. We’ve been walking over to try the swings, slides, and other fun things almost every day. Here are some shots of Lucas’ first ride on the swings. I think they’re his favorite.

A couple weeks ago, North Kansas City had its annual Snake Saturday festival. We enjoy going to the parade; you can read more about it in this post from last year.

The weather was great. Lucas is wearing a hat not because it was chilly, but because we were worried about the top of his head getting sun burned. We’ve since bought a bucket hat that you’ll likely see in future pictures. All the activity was pretty overwhelming for him–the sirens, honking trucks, shouting people, kids running after candy. The look on his face in this picture is pretty much how he looked the whole time.

Like usual, there were loads of people there to watch an endless stream of parade participants. Lots of fun.

Here’s Lucas sitting in his booster seat where we explore new foods together. We got off to a slow start with the rice cereal–he hated it. Same with barley and oatmeal. We moved to vegetables, and that’s been going much better. I feel like we could endlessly shovel sweet potatoes and carrots into his mouth and he’d be content. We’ll see what happens when we move to less appealing veggies.

Lucas filled out his first NCAA bracket of his entire life this week. He selected his teams by showing preference for toys or hands or cars or whatever his parents could put in front of him with him actually paying attention. It took a couple days, but we finally got the job done.

The picture above is his score line in the Ramon family pool. He picked Kentucky to beat Cincinnati in the final, and the other two components of his final four are Virginia and San Diego State. We haven’t told him, but the poor guy is in the bottom 1% of all entries (currently tied for 6,383,138th place). We’re not sure if he’s inherited his grandma’s competitive nature, so he may not care.

Along with turning six months old seems to come many milestones: trying new foods, sitting up, and crawling.  Lucas is definitely trying all of these.  Whether they are enjoyable or not, he is not so sure.  We have tried to encourage him to crawl by placing a few toys (onlookers) just beyond his reach.  Lucas just thinks they are mocking him.

Yes, believe it or not Lucas is officially six months old as of last week. It’s crazy to think that someone can go from the size he was in these and these photos to the size he is now in only a handful of months.

Since he’s getting older, it’s not uncommon to see him wince and rub his lower back after he reaches for a set of plastic rings that was just a bit too far away. His knees have started to creak a bit when he gets up on all fours, and every once in a while I’ll catch him staring off into the distance as he tries to recall what he was babbling about or why he wanted my attention. “Man, where in the world did I put my ball with the bell hidden inside?  It was right here…”

Hello again! We’re up to a bunch of new stuff here a the Ramon household. Lucas can pretty much sit on the floor by himself, he’s been eating cereal for three weeks, and he’s nearly crawling. It’s crazy how fast things change with him. I have a bunch of pictures queued up, so I’ll post them after I get them all cropped and prepped.

Also, happy birthday to ramonfamily.org! We made our first post one year ago yesterday. Unfortunately I have to take this opportunity to once again apologize for not posting more frequently. Things have been busy for us here in Kansas City. I’m spending a lot of my not-so-spare time on a software project which doesn’t leave much room in the schedule for creating new posts. When we started this thing I wouldn’t have guessed that we’d still be keeping it up after a year. I’m glad you all have enjoyed it. It’s been really fun for us to share.

Lucas is usually the first one up so he puts his slippers on, heads downstairs to start the coffee, and steps outside to get the paper.  He is such a good little boy.

Yeah it’s not Valentine’s day yet, but we decided to celebrate it as a family by getting breakfast at Blue Bird Bistro, one of our favorite Kansas City restaurants. My pancakes with sweet potatoes, granola, and cinnamon were delicious, and Lindsay’s french toast was great as usual.