Merry Christmas!!

Peace Health Hope LIVESTRONG Holiday 5x7 folded card

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Halloween Fun 2010

Ramon loved his Buzz Lightyear costume that Grandmomster found for him and he wasn't letting go of his Buzz Lightyear doll he got from Grandma:).



Here's his first Halloween house ever...



And a cool night-time shot:)



For some fun video, check out youtube...



and lots and lots of photos on flickr...

Halloween 2010

and lots of youtube videos
Ramon's youtube videos

pumpkin ice cream...yummy

Yes, I think Ramon likes pumpkin ice cream. Yummy ice cream at the new Cheese Louise.

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loving the rain

Ramon and Ruta love walking in the rain. Fortunately for them.we had plenty last week:).

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booopeeet

Ramon enjoying his blanket or boopeet

Fall fun

We've been having a lot of fun in the fall up in the Catskills. Here's Ramon playing around with his hat. We have lots of apples and pears, as long as we get to them before the animals.

It's been getting a little chillier, hopefully the new radiant heat will be turned on this week. Check out the pictures, it's a pretty wild setup. It's good we are replacing the hot water heater, since it's pretty old and spits out lots of rusty water when you turn it on.

We just found someone to clean out the barn, so now we can store gear and stuff. We just found out our carpenter's specialty is redoing old barns, so maybe a fun project for next year.

When are back in the city, Ramon has lots of fun with fire hydrants.

Hummus...it's what's for breakfast

Yesterday Ramon and I went to the Bronx Zoo. On the drive over Ramon started asking for hummus. Uh oh. It is New York but even here in New York the zoos don't sell hummus for lunch. So I happily fed him whatever else we had and we decided to try the zoo anyway. We had a great time. The children's zoo was particularly exciting. Click on the picture below to see the full zoo photo set :).



Now that Ramon is talking the zoo was so much more exciting. He got to chant "animals...animals." He said "peacock" over and over. He ran up to a turtle yelling its name. He got to say "cock-a-doodle-doo" to a rooster wandering freely among the tourists. It was great fun.

Then he got tired and when I asked if he wanted to see more animals or go home for hummus he said, "home...hummus!" He was feeling so hummus deprived that he even had hummus with his oatmeal for breakfast this morning.

Sprinklers in the parks are awesome

Ramon was pretty excited to run in the sprinkler at the playground today.

Ramon enjoying the rain and running to play with the bus;)

The best toys

The best toys are holes in the dirt and bright, shiny pennies.

Driving the Bus

Ramon is obsessed with buses. He hums and then says, "Bus!" at the right spot for Wheels on the Bus. He carries around Fillmore from the Cars movie all the time saying bus. He also calls a lot of other wheeled things buses while pointing at their wheels, bopping up and down and humming.

When Daddy drove by in our bus he tried to run as fast as he could on the sidewalk to catch up...then he refused to leave it parked on the street so we could play in the park.

Here he is driving already :).

Wheels

It has been forever since I posted. So much has been happening so quickly that it will be a while before I get caught up :).

We spend a lot of time in Isham Park. There are always gobs of kids and great piles of toys to run off with. It seems like Ramon touches every wheeled item in the park at least once every time we go. He especially likes the mini kickboards (little scooters with two wheels up front instead of one). Last week I was talking to another mommy and she was saying that her 13 month old girl figured out how to ride one. She gets up on it and totally kicks one leg out to move. I was very impressed. I said that Ramon didn't do that. He kind of pushes 'em around and tips 'em over to play with the wheels. So I turned to throw Ruta's ball cuz he barked at me and this mommy says, "Uh, Cherith...you should see this..." Ramon made a liar out of me...he was totally riding somebody's kickboard. And now he has his own :).

I'm still figuring out how to use the camcorder function on my HTC Incredible so the video is sideways...but here you go :).



And another...

Ramon's latest doctor checkup

Here's the the latest stats. I kind of like this virtual wall measure:).

new maplewoodpizzeria.com is up and running

The new maplewoodpizzeria.com website is up and running for business. We used squarespace and it worked out pretty well. Reminded me a lot of hosted wordpress, but with fewer plugins and a little easier to work with. Check it out.

awesome book on how to ride a bike

A wonderful book. Ramon has been playing with the push bike we got him and he's definitely starting to warm up to it. I think going at his pace is key. Peter's story will help us keep in mind the key principles and daddy's two favorite principles - keep it fun and a bit of speed is helpful:). Thanks Oliver!

http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/11124

Looking in the Catskills

We've been checking out places in the Catskills. I think we found a place we liked and Ramon and Ruta really liked it. Our offer is accepted, so hopefully soon we can be spending more time up in the beautiful Catskills.

Ramon's First Haircut

We got Ramon his first haircut yesterday at Ray's Barber in Inwood. Ray did a pretty awesome job and Ramon looks great. Ramon even was distracted enough that he was okay with the cut. We got some iPhone pics and video;). Ray gave us a cool First Haircut certificate too!

Stats from the 1 year checkup

Here's the 1 year checkup card from Ramon's doctor visit.

Flying over the Rockies, very beautiful

Here's a video of flying over Rockies with some Colorado blue sky in the background. Let the video buffer before viewing, so watch the gray bar line to the right of the play button and wait till it goes all the way to the right.

Plane ride over the rockies from Raymond Velez on Vimeo.

Heading to Durango

Ramon had lots of fun early in the morning crawling around Newark airport. Seemed like everyone was heading skiing for the president's day week.

Ramon in Newark Airport, heading to Durango, CO from Raymond Velez on Vimeo.

Mia and Shaun are visiting!

Mia and Shaun are visiting. Mia and Ramon took a bath together and had a blast.

It's been a loooong time

We have been slow to post with all the holiday travel and fun. Ramon is also entranced by my computer so whenever it comes out suddenly i have a very clingy shadow :). Right now he is enjoying his frog humidifier. He has turned it all the way up and is trying to catch the mist. Then he put his head in it and shook it and giggled like he was enjoying a nice hot shower. Another fun activity in his room that is not quite childproofed enough is taking all the wipes out of the wipe warmer and then attacking the walls with them...the blood spots from when Imba bit Ruta's ear are still there and apparently don't come off no matter how many wipes you clean them with.

Last night he totally confused me. He came crawling out of his room with his blanket in his hands and a pacifier in his mouth. He looked very proud of himself but it was 5:45...not bed time. So I thought, well maybe he's tired and wants to go to bed early. We nursed and got his room all "bedified" and then he started yelling at me 10 minutes later....NOT bed time apparently (no, he didn't say that..he just cried..i interpreted :)). He was just practicing his new ability to get his own blanket out of his crib and crawl around with it :).

He has been enjoying cruising around holding on to furniture and toys with less and less reliance. He now enjoys hand holding walks around the apartment too. Once or twice he has stood for a few seconds on his own. But he seems to enjoy crawling so much I don't think he'll be walking around very soon. His cousin, Mia, on the other hand sounds like she might go directly to walking like I did.

Now he is chasing a tube of aquaphor around our bedroom. The air filter has fun buttons to push so he turns that off regularly and he just figured out he can push the air filter around so around and around it goes :).

Oh, and the nap "unschedule" has become even less scheduled. He gave up morning nap for a week and now there are 2 hour morning naps all of a sudden...and they start anywhere from 8:30 to 10:30 in the morning....I am having a hard time following :). Night time sleep is plateauing at 2 to 3 wakeups for a boobie night cap. Ray and I toyed with the idea of getting serious about doing some kind of low key sleep training....ummmm...yeah, maybe that will happen someday. I guess this is what happens when the boobs don't have to go to work the next day :).