Lucas Camilo

We’re thrilled to report that Lucas’s second, third, and fourth days of school were as successful as his first.  There was singing every day, which Lucas seems to be veru happy about.  Not to mention painting, drawing, blocks, magnets, and recess.  What could be better?

On Monday and Tuesday we drove Lucas to school and Krista hung around a lot at hist class, or wandered to a nearby coffee shop and worried about how Lucas was doing.  Then we picked him up and drove him home.  The great part of that arrangement was that at least one of us could spy on Lucas.  (Which we pitched to the staff as “helping.”)  More than once, Krista came into the classroom only to find Lucas sitting up in his chair in the middle of 11 other wound-up kids, shouting, running, and playing.  And, though it’s not like Lucas to enjoy new and unknown chaos, he looked like it was really enjoying it.

One of the best things about Lucas’s school is that it is a preschool-fifth grade elementary school that was built to include kids with physical disabilities.  So while there are lots of kids running around who have no disabilities, there are also plenty of kids with lots of extra gear, including another little girl with a tracheostomy in Lucas’s class.  And though Lucas is the only one with a wheelchair in his class, there are kids learning to drive power chairs in the halls, and all over the building storing you can find kid-sized walkers, standers and special seating devises in various corners and crannies.  The giant playground structure – the kind that would usually have lots of steps, ladders or ropes – is ramped and therefore totally Lucas-accessible.  We found him Tuesday afternoon up high, with his nurse pushing him over the “hanging bridge” part of the structure.  When we asked him later what he did at school, he just repeated, “We went over the bridge!”

The low point in the week for Lucas was the arrival of the school bus on Wednesday morning.  We had tried to talk it up to get him excited (predicting that it would be scary for him, and maybe us too).  The short bus pulled up, and everything was fine until the driver started to lower the wheelchair lift.  The noise and maybe protrusion of this huge contraption freaked Lucas out, and he shed huge, heartbreaking tears.  In the middle of it all, Krista asked the driver his name — Lucas likes knowing people’s names — and we learned it was Victor.  That was a turning point, maybe because one of Lucas’s favorite people in Washington DC was nurse Victor.  So through his tears, he signed the letter V and agreed to get on the lift.  By the time Victor has tied Lucas’s chair down in the bus, Lucas was calm and ready to go.

Lucas rides the bus with his nurses, so for better or for worse we can get up-to-date status text messages.  On Wednesday that meant learning that what should have been a 25 minute bus ride took almost an hour (Victor got lost) and that Lucas totally lost it at the end.  But the afternoon ride was quick, and by Thursday morning Victor had smoothed things out significantly.  The jury’s still out on whether or not we’ll keep sending Lucas on the bus before and after school, but the fact that we were able to let go and trust the driver, the nurse, and the universe with Lucas on a school bus felt like a major milestone in our lives as parents.

We’ve felt so incredibly proud of Lucas and his first week of school.  New experiences tend to scare him, so the fact that he was so open to so many new people and places was amazing.  Honestly, we feel very fortunate about his transition to school being so smooth thus far, especially given how much other special needs families often struggle with this transition.  We know that many challenges that still lay ahead, but for now it’s ok to bask in the goodness of the moment.

We want to thank you all so much for your love and support — via blog/facebook notes, phone calls and cheers — as we celebrate Lucas’s major achievement!