Lucas Camilo

We are behind in posting here, and it’s hard to know where to start with a Lucas update these days.  We’ve been taking full advantage of our wheelchair van super-mobility, feeling lucky to have such great friends and family to hang out with, and so many beautiful parks, beaches, and mountains to explore in and around Seattle.

Since we’re not going to write about it in details, it feels worth making a list of places we’ve taken Lucas, to mark (if just for ourselves) how totally mobile our life is right now.  Two years ago it felt like most of our trips out of the house were to the doctors office, and even those trips were rare.  But just in the last 15 days we’ve gone to:

– Paradise lodge at Mt. Rainier for the weekend, with Gramma Susan, Charles, and Aunt Megan

– The library, music class, and the post office (Lucas loves stamps, it turns out)

– The Arboretum and Seward Park with Tio Sha, who came to visit last week

– A long meeting with the school district to finalize Lucas’s IEP (thanks to Stef for coming along to entertain Lucas so the two of us could participate in the meeting!)

– Hood Canal this weekend, with three other families and their many small kids

The hours in the van haven’t been Lucas’s favorite, but as long as he’s not totally exhausted he tolerates the longer-haul trips.  But of course sometimes he is exhausted, so that has meant a couple hairy moments, with Lucas looking absolutely misearble, and us trying to discern if he’s having trouble breathing or just grumpy.  And we’re still not sure all the time, and it feels terrible to think you’ve put your kid in a place that is painful… so there have been those moments too.

An upshot of the van is that it came equipped with a working sound system (unlike our old car), so Lucas can now request his favorite song on repeat.  Which can drive a person crazy, but then if he doesn’t get it he’s able to cry like he’s having trouble breathing, so we hurry to put it back on.  And miraculously the “Sticks” and “Naranja” songs sometimes seem to clear his airway :)

Speaking of the “naranja song,” Lucas’s latest obsession is Spanish.  He suddenly realized that some of the books we have are in Spanish — books that for the last year he hasn’t wanted to hear — and he got excited.  It started with La Oruga Muy Hambrienta (The Very Hungry Caterpillar).  He memorized “una manzana” (one apple), “dos pears” (two pears), “tres ciruelas” (three plums)…  Then he went on to memorize the caterpillar’s entire Saturday menu (un biscocho de chocolate, un helado, un pepinillo, un trozo de queso suizo, etc.)  It may seem hard to believe, but Lucas now has the entire book memorized in Spanish.  He proceeded to counting a week later, and has now mastered going all the way to 15 in Spanish, and he’s close to 20 (see the video above of when he first got the counting bug).  Each time he gets to where he’s going, he finishes with such glee.  His counting sounds like this: uno, dos, tres, cuatro, cinco, seis, siete, ocho, nueEVEEEE, DIEEEEEEEZZZZZZ!!!!!!!  He does the ASL signs (or tries) along with the number, and shakes his fist in the sign for 10 along with his ebullient “DIEZ!”  It’s pretty amazing to watch.

So his favorite question these days is “how do you say ____ in Spanish?”  We’ve gotten “how do you say scoop in Spanish?” (sacar).  “How do you say plunger in Spanish?” (embolo, for a syringe).  “How do you say walrus in Spanish?” (el morso).  This is testing even our vocabulary, so he’s learned what it means when we say “do you want me to go look it up?”  He always says yes. He’s even asked, “How do you say Spanish in Spanish?”

We have a number of friends who are raising their kids intentionally bilingually – something we maybe thought we’d try, long before Lucas was born.  And then there were so many other things going on, we never got around to the Spanish on any regular basis.  So although this fascination isn’t exactly turning us into a bilingual family, it’s thrilling to see him pushing us, and even getting experimental.  The other day he was trying to tell us something that we didn’t understand, so we asked him if he could “use another word,” (a cue his speech therapist has been working on.)  He sort of sighed and declared, “how do you say Butterfly in Spanish!”  He had been pointing at his temporary tatoo, saying “Mariposa tatoo!”

And then we got out his Hungry Caterpillar playing cards (yes, they exist), and Lucas was looking through them, naming the fruits and other foods.  At one point he held up a handful or cards with the caterpillar them and said admiringly and to no one in particular, “Look at all those Orugas.” He looked like a king counting his gold… in Spanglish!

And speaking of counting your blessings, there’s wonderful article in the Atlantic by a mother of a son with disabilities.  She writes beautifully about the feeling of fullness, of having everything you need, even when from the outside your life looks hard.  Even when your life IS hard.   You can read it here.

We keep meaning to share the many resources that we love, so look out for some more book/article review soon.  And if you have great resources on parenting or disability or parenting and disability, send them our way and we’ll compile a resources page.