Lucas Camilo

It’s been a good week for Lucas – he’s been rocking the xylophone (a Xmas present from grandma Susan), sitting up more in his chair, bouncing on the giant yellow peanut-ball, and smiling as he shows off his obsession with pointing his index figure repeatedly at his nose.  Here’s a video of the xylophone playing – notice the hum of the vent is absent as Lucas is wearing his Passy-Muir valve:

He also started his new nebulizetreatment for psuedomonas, which has to happen twice a day but doesn’t end up being too much of a problem.  Lucas was much more upset about his latest shot of Synagis, a drug that helps prevent high-risk babies like Lucas from getting the nasty RSV respiratory infection.   Burke and Florence took Lucas into the pediatrician today for his monthly dose, and as soon as the (very sweet) nurse who administers the shot walked in the room Lucas started freaking out – he turned beet red, opened his mouth wide open in “cry-face”, and even shed a few tears.  The nurse hadn’t even pulled out the shot yet!  Presumably Lucas recognized her and figured out at that the moment what was coming… when she came back in a few minutes later with the shot Lucas went crazy again, this time even making whimpering sounds as she quickly administered the shot, half a dose in each thigh.  Burke held his hand and we all had to chuckle a little – it’s never fun seeing a baby cry, but in a way it was kinda cute, and also nice to see Lucas demonstrate both powers of recognition and a strong emotion reaction.

Lucas has made a few more excursions outside lately and seems to be enjoying it.  We watched the Super Bowl with friends Yari, Michael, Isham and Olivia in a house on the Maryland border, and Lucas seemed to enjoy the experience.  He also had fun during the multiple block walk through downtown DC this morning on the way to the pediatrician.  Then Krista brought him outside this afternoon to sit in the front yard and watch the people and cars go by.  It was 50 degrees, the warmest day in a while, which has us all looking forward to spring.

Speaking of outings, a couple people have inquired about our last blog post and the “challenges” that led us to say that “there won’t be any more winter road trips this year.”  The reality is that we probably didn’t describe well enough just how difficult it is to pack up Lucas for an overnight trip.  It takes hours and involves a lot of worrying about which of the many spare parts/power-cords/medications we might forget.  Last week we didn’t forget anything significant, but the fact that we spent 99% of the cold weekend inside watching movies had us thinking that we could just as well have stayed home and done the same thing.  That being said, the view of the trees and the snow-covered hills was pretty nice…