Lucas Camilo

2010, the first full year Lucas lived from start to finish, is over.  It’s one of those years that went by way too fast, with a lot of ups and downs and blurry periods in between.  We thought about writing a little “best of” list as part of this blog post, but didn’t get around to it since we’ve been so busy with family in town.  And besides, we’ve got more important things to talk about: an update on Lucas.

Family visits always seems to bring out the best in Lucas and this one has proved to be no exception.  Krista’s mom and sister arrived on Christmas Eve and left on Thursday and in between got a lot of quality time with Lucas.  Burke’s parents arrived Monday, overlapped briefly with Megan and Susan for a few days of flurried activity around the Han-Stans household, and are still here through early next week.  Everyone is amazed by how much Lucas has grown lately, and happy to see him in good health.  Most exciting for all of us are some small but significant developments in the past few weeks.

As we mentioned in previous posts, Lucas is becoming more and more interactive.  He’s got his “itsy-bitsy” spider hand-movement down, along with the hello/goodbye waive, along with the high-five, and a few other tricks he’s working on.  He has become more and more deliberate with each motion and seems to be more confident about what exactly is going on when each motion is made.  Meanwhile, just in the past few weeks Lucas has began really showing his enjoyment of different sensations, in particular feeling with his hands.  We’ve built up quite a collection of “touchy-feely” books and his current favorite is “Where’s my Snowman?,” which his Great Aunt Penny and Great Uncle Steve gave him for Christmas.  The other day Lucas was sitting up in his chair and kept flipping back to the page with the fuzzy mittens, and then running both hands over the rough green, surface as he smiled with glee.  When we turned a few pages to the one with the snowman’s rough buttons, Lucas would feel the surface for a moment before slowly and deliberately flipping the pages back to the green fuzzy mittens.  Then he’d smile and rub both hands over the pages again.

Lucas is also becoming so much more playful with his actions.  And like any kid his age, he enjoys constant repetition of a new favorite game.  He loves to grab a rattle or wooden spoon and launch it over the side of the crib, only to have his daddy pick up the object in question and place it back within his reach.  He then launches it over the side again and wiggles with glee as Burke disappears to pick it up, a moment that is often drawn out as Burke hides out of sight, waiting to bounce up and hand Lucas the rattle once again.  This went on for a good hour the other night, and it was nearly 11 pm by the time Burke threw in the towel and hid the rattle away for the evening.  A few nights later it was Papa’s glasses that provided the object of the game, with the challenge being to reach up, grab them in the middle between the eyes, and slowly pull the ends over Papa’s ears… followed by triumphantly shaking the glasses in the air once they were free of Papa’s face.

The other thing that is really cool is how much Lucas recognizes us these days… and how much he shows it.  It could be that for some time he’s gotten excited when mom or dad comes home after being gone for the day, but has been unable to express his excitement because of the limitations of his disease.  Whatever the case may be, lately when one of us walks into the room and says “hey Lucas!” a huge smile appears on his face, he starts wiggling furiously (at least as much as his weak tummy muscles will allow), and usually throws in a vigorous double-handed waive.  Oh yeah, and he also does a version of this routine when Victor or Florence arrive, or Nonna and Papa, or Gramma and Aunt Megan, or other friends he hasn’t seen for a while… but needless to say, there’s an extra sparkle in his eye for mom and dad and it makes our hearts melt every time.

With lots of good stuff going on for Lucas lately we’re all excited about what 2011 may bring.  Though we don’t have time to reflect on all the challenging and wonderful things that went down over the past year – from Lucas being diagnosed with Myotubular Myopathy in February to organizing our first public event as parents of a child with disabilities in December – we are grateful to be together with Lucas and for all that our friends and family have done to support us this past year.   And we’re definitely grateful to have kept this blog going as long as we have.  Thanks for reading and continuing to comment.  We’d love to hear your highlights of 2010 and what you’re looking forward to for 2011!