Lucas Camilo

Lucas enjoyed spending thanksgiving this year with both of our families up on Whidbey Island.  The weather was great (a rarity for November in the NW) with the snow-covered mountains rising above the calm skyline above the Puget Sound.  We took a few walks around the nearby Greenbank Farm, which Lucas will mostly remember for his fortunate encounter with a 120 pound puppy (“that was a giant puppy!” he kept saying in retelling the story to all who would listen.)

Everyone prepared some food on Thanksgiving including Burke’s famous tofurkey, made from scratch and including a vegan, gluten-free stuffing.   There was a “real” turkey too.  And Lucas benefited from all the cooking by getting some special treats in his tube formula.  Perhaps best of all was watching Lucas and his cousin Madden read together on the couch during our last day on Whidbey Island.  It’s sometimes hard to find ways to get Lucas and his fast-moving cousins interacting, especially without too much coaching or facilitating on our part, so it was awesome to see.

It’s been a long time since we’ve chronicled Lucas’s life — other than our visit to the firehouse on the anniversary of his accident — so here are a few more recent tidbits in no particular order:

• Our friend Sha was in town recently and his visit included a snazzy Lucas haircut and some awesome new Lucas yoga moves that Krista and Sha worked as a team to develop.  (See video at the bottom of this post.)  Sha used to live up the street from us in Washington DC and has known Lucas since he was a few days old, long before he even made it out of the hospital… and though Lucas sometimes doesn’t remember old friends from DC, he definitely remembers Sha, and they always have a blast together.

• On Saturday we tried to take Lucas to the small, local movie theater.  Unfortunately, the show ended up being on the second floor (with no elevator) so we couldn’t watch the film.  Lucas was a little disappointed since we’d really hyped up the movie, and it was one of those hard disability/accessibility moments.  The people at the theater felt horrible and gave us a gift certificate and offered to do a special screening on the main floor just for Lucas the following week.  That was really nice.  But even better was going down the street to grab a beer and some pizza and having Lucas be in the best of moods.  He was cracking us up doing his harbor seal impression, and we decided that it was meant to be that we didn’t make the movie.  And then we went by our friend Scott’s Hanukkah party and Lucas enjoyed that too, and made some new friends.

• The last few times we’ve been to the park we’ve brought Lucas’s baseball bat and a tennis ball and played a game in which he pitches (by dropping the ball over the edge of his wheelchair armrest), Burke hits, and any kids who are around chase down the ball and run it back in to Lucas.  As we said before, its tough to find games that Lucas can play with other kids and so its satisfying when we pull it off.   The only problem is that we’ve seen some tears and squabbling amongst the ball chasers, including Lucas’s cousins.

• As much as Lucas revels in the attention of family and friends visiting, we enjoy it, too.  When Nonna, Papa, Grandma, Aunt Megan, Aunt Ashely and uncle Brandon are around for a couple days, it means we get to step away from constant book-reading/puzzle-fetching duty with Lucas to enjoy a bit of uninterrupted time for cooking, magazine reading, or even starting a knitting project!  Susan and Megan spent an extra day in Seattle with us, and Lucas was very excited to take Grandma to the library to borrow more books to add to his overflowing collection. His current top pick is A is for Autumn.

(Note: These days Lucas often expresses his affinity for something by singing a bar of his favorite song, “Hey Lolly” with the words changed and himself as the protagonist… so that’s what’s going on in this video.)