Lucas Camilo

Last Friday – August 17 – was Lucas’s 3rd birthday.

Whereas last year we had a big party in his honor this time around we kept it low key.  Lucas woke up a little grumpy on his birthday and didn’t seem too excited about anyone singing him “happy birthday.”  But by the afternoon he was in a good mood and the three of us spent a great couple hours sitting by the lake, recalling some of the early days of being a family together and mostly feeling glad to be alive.  We found it hard to articulate something as momentous as 3 years of life – especially for a kid who barelymade it to his third day of life – and so we didn’t bother trying much.  Instead we convinced Lucas to sit down in the water with Burke and get splashed by incoming waves.  It was 90 degrees, after all, a rarity for Seattle, and despite initial reservations Lucas ended up loving the dip.

On Saturday we had an actual party for Lucas.  It was a family affair, with Krista’s mom coming up from Portland and Burke’s parents, sister, brother-in-law and 3 nieces joining us at the park for a picnic.  Lucas indulged his recently amplified Sesame Street obsession by playing with Bert, Ernie and Cookie Monster figurines (not to mention “Grande Parajo”, his name for Big Bird in Spanish.)  Burke made balloon animals for all the kids, and we took turns reading books with Lucas and testing out new flash cards.  Then we pulled out the blanket swing, one of Lucas’s favorite pastimes, and Lucas showed off how he can count to 24 in Spanish as two people throw him into the air with the blanket.  For the first time ever Lucas got to do a double-swing, with his cousins – first Tya and then Madden – joining him inside the blanket for the ride.  Then he watched as others enjoyed the swing and demanded “Daddy do it!”  Sadly, Papa and uncle Brandon were not up for the job of swinging Burke in the blanket.

The reason we went to this particular park in Columbia City was that the Lorax movie was set to play at sundown.  Of course, by the time 8:30 rolled around Lucas and his cousins were too beat to stay up for the movie.  But the cool thing about doing it at the park ahead of the outdoor screening was that lots of other kids were around, and a group of them ended up jumping into our celebration.  Even though he didn’t get to see the “Worax”, Lucas was pretty pleased about the whole thing.  We think it was just about the best birthday party we could have had.

The next morning Krista was up bright and early to do a triathlon!  Lucas, Burke and Gramma made it to the finish line just in time to see Krista cross a good 20 minutes before she predicted.  Lucas was proud – “mommy did a race!” he said – and so were the rest of us.  All-in-all a good birthday weekend.