Lucas Camilo

We’ve been talking about wanting to share a family update, but still wrestle with how much to share our kids’ lives now that they’re growing – especially Lucas, as he grows old enough to have peers on the internet. We’ve found that over the summer, when there is more time and more novelty to report on, Lucas is more willing to blog. So cross your fingers for Lucas coming back to the blog to tell you about himself this summer. For now, here is an update about Ida.

Ida started part-time preschool in the fall, and she has loved every single day of it. She is incredibly social, and her teachers tell us that she is the “bringer-togetherer “of her class – she tries to include kids in play, likes chatting with her friends while they’re going potty together, and likes to help the teachers. At home, she remains some magical (and at times difficult) combination of strong willed, determined, and still pretty easy going. She rarely throws tantrums, but she constantly seems to be looking for boundaries she can test and push and test again. (Friends with teenagers tell me this is a preview.) There are times when she is asking me genuinely curious and wonderful questions. Like this morning, she really wanted to know where she was when I was little and before she was born. “There was a time there was no Ida,” was absolutely unacceptable as an answer. I tried hard to find something true that she could hold. Burke told her she was a giraffe.

But there are also afternoons when it feels like all her questions and requests are just fishing expeditions for me to say “no” to something so that she can push back against me – asking for things she knows she can’t have. When she wakes up in the middle of the night, she knows she can request water or soy milk. We always say yes, and we leave, and by the time we’re out the door she’s usually asleep again.   Last night when she called me into her room at 3 am, she asked groggily, “can I drink wine soon?” I actually couldn’t tell if it was searching for a boundary to argue with or genuine curiosity. But both those options would have woken her up, so I said in my quietest, most soothing voice, “I don’t know, we’ll talk about it later.” For now that worked, but I’m sure pretty soon she’s going to be demanding a growler full of hoppy beer.

But even with the struggles and pushing, Ida is also remarkable at being able to laugh pretty quickly coming out of a fall or a struggle.

When she turned three in February I wrote this list for her – my list of my favorite things about her at three. I couldn’t keep it to top 10, so I did 10, plus three for good luck.

Dear Ida-Turning-Three. Things I so love about you right now include:

• Your outfits!  Yesterday you wore a black shirt with a hot pink guitar, pastel and neon shooting star leggings, with a black-and-white Hello Kitty print skirt, which you call your “ruffles.” Amazing.
• Your lazy left eye that makes your grins look like you’re always planning something hilarious.
• Your stomping and arm-flapping pajama dance.
• Your belly. You still march around the house leading with that belly.
• The way you love to play “chase,” and how much you love to squeal when we catch you.
• Your imagination. Your blanket effortlessly becomes a “stand up motorcycle.”
• Your instructions. You are not afraid to tell everyone how a game will be played, or when Lucas should be done with his iPad.
• Your negotiation skills. You can count – you get the concept of numbers – and yet no matter how long we say you have until bed – one minute or ten minutes – you say “No! Four Minutes!”
• Your caring. While I was sick you brought me cough drops over and over and said “here’s your medicine, Mommy.” You love genuinely trying to help Lucas, and even recently pulled off a perfect mouth suction for him.
• Your appetite! You love snacks, and when we you get your hands on food that you want, you eat with such pleasure.
• Your sweetness. At a meeting recently I saw you spot the juice boxes on the table. I almost stopped you as you grabbed one, but then I let it go. You picked it up and took it over to give to a younger kid.
• Your curiosity. Last week you took the end of Lucas’s ventilator tube and put it in your mouth. It wasn’t turned on, but it made sense to want to try.
• Your love of books. You make yourself “nests” of books and, on some days, you read to yourself for long periods of time. May you always find books that you love!

Even a couple months later, there is so much to add to the list. Her sense of humor gets better and better (or worse, depending on your taste). She’s grown up hearing Lucas and Burke blame their farts on each other. The other day she was standing near Burke in the kitchen and suddenly shouted out “Daddy toot!” We looked at each other for a minute and then cracked up. She had silently farted and then blamed Burke. She was soooo proud of herself when we laughed at her joke!

And then there is her love of sweets. We try to go low on sugar without being too dogmatic about it. When we’re out we get a cookie sometimes. We make pancakes and cookies and scones at home sometimes. She gets her hands on an occasional bit of candy. She wishes (like me) there was a more steady flow of pie in our home. Anyway, the point is that she loves sugar, and she is not totally deprived. The other day after preschool pick-up, we went to the nearby bakery for coffee and a cookie. We got a small cookie and a not much bigger cookie, both to share. Partway through her little cookie, she snuggled over into my side and declared “I love you so much Mommy!” You’d think I had given her the moon.

I was about to wrap up and realize I haven’t said much about how she’s doing physically. She’s amazing. She’s a little slower than her peers, and has to work harder than many kids her age to get up off the floor, to walk (and pull herself) up stairs, and to run and keep up with other kids. We feel incredibly happy that her physical limitations are not getting in her way much. Of course we have no idea what the future holds – maybe she’ll be frustrated some day that hills are so much harder for her than most. But for now, we’re trying to stay pretty focused on how incredible, and incredibly well, she’s doing.

Anyway. There is so much more to say about this miraculous three-year-old, but for now I wanted to give a snapshot of Ida in 2018. She is starting to make up stories, so maybe she’s not far from being able to tell her own story here, too.