Lucas Camilo

So much has happened in the last few weeks that it’s hard to know where to start.  Nonna and Papa went home; Krista got back from the northwest; Lucas has decided that tubes are definitely his favorite toys; we’ve almost completely transitioned from breast milk to a smoothie diet; we’ve seen lots of specialists for routine visits; the three of us went on more outings together; and Lucas has started to grow chest hair.  OK, just kidding about the last one.  But he’s growing so fast that sometimes it seems like one day he’ll go to sleep a baby and wake up a teenager.

The good news on the health front is that Lucas remains super healthy.  He underwent a test last Friday in which a doctor catheterized him, drained his bladder and then filled it up again with some radioactive liquid.  They then took pictures of his bladder and ureters – the tubes that drain down from kidneys to the bladder – to see if the valves are now working and the fluid would stay in his bladder.  Lucas was piping mad as they pumped his bladder full.  (When he heard about it later, Burke was mad too, and thankful to not have to sit through the procedure since he doesn’t handle those kinds of things very well.)  In the end, it was a success – the liquid stayed where it was supposed to, meaning the valves are working and therefore he doesn’t need to take his daily preventative antibiotic anymore!  One more drug we’re done with.  The following Monday morning he was back in the radiology clinic, this time for some routine CT scans of the ventricles in his brain.  The images show that everything is steady, which is good news again: no need for invasive procedures in his brain.

Meanwhile, other signs of health that don’t show up on ultrasounds or CT scans are just as positive.  Lucas has been wiggling around more than ever, cracking up when we tickle him or even threaten a tickle.  His neck seems to be getting stronger, so he looks around the room or studies toys more purposefully.

Modeling Solidarity Cyclers 2008 T-shirts

Maybe it’s the lentils and Swiss chard, or maybe it’s the new vitamins, or maybe it’s the alignment of the stars, but Lucas just looks more vital and happy to be here than ever.  It’s been great.

This past weekend was CISPES’s fifth solidarity cyclers 3-day ride around Maryland, Virginia, and West Virginia.  The two of us, pre-Lucas, helped start the fundraiser ride and we rode it three seasons in a row (check out this video Burke made from 2008).  Every year the cyclists have stopped to camp one night at the Wheatland Vegetable Farm in rural Virginia.  So on Sunday the three of us drove out to the farm to deliver beer and share dinner with the sweaty cyclists.  Every year the ride has taken place during magnificent late-summer-turning-to-fall weather, and this weekend was no exception.  It was a beautiful evening, and despite the prolific population of stink bugs that wouldn’t leave him alone, Lucas seemed to have a good time.  A highlight of the evening was seeing Chip and Susan, the owners of the farm and the visionaries who helped establish farmers markets in the DC area in the late 70s.  Lucas got to hang out in Susan’s arms as she told him about his last trip to the farm, when Krista was 5 months pregnant and growing fast.  Indeed, Wheatland is also the place where friends and family gathered last spring for our commitment ceremony and since Lucas was born in a hurry 2 short months later, we haven’t been back since.

Whether it’s hanging out on the farm, in the backyard, on rolling around on the floor in the living room, chances are these days that when you come across Lucas he’ll be clutching the same thin, translucent object in his hands: the suction tube.  This 5-foot piece of rubber, extending from the growling suction machine to the soft-tipped oral suction catheter, has become Lucas’s very favorite toy and security blanket.  If we hand Lucas the tube when he’s hanging out on his exercise ball it always puts a smile on his face and an extra bounce in his step.  To test out Lucas’s remarkable new reaching skills – he can now bring both arms straight off the ground and hold them vertically extended in front of him – you just need to dangle that suction tube above his head.  We’ve even come to think that sometimes Lucas cringes and pretends that he needs to be suctioned just to trick us into pulling out the tube, at which point he clutches it and holds on for dear life.  He also has an uncanny ability to sense the presence of the tube, whether behind his head or under a pillow, and he almost always figure out how to use his limited movements to grasp it.  And once he’s got a grip, good luck loosening his hands from that tube!

Although he missed his daddy, Lucas had a great extended weekend with his Gramma Susan.  Lucas seemed excited to have a new audience (of one) who appreciated all his developments: his singing, his increasing precision of head and arm movements, and his late-night goofiness.  In fact, we had thought that he was starting to develop a slightly earlier-to-bed routine, but while his Gramma was here he pulled out all the stops to stay up late playing and giggling.  Lucas still doesn’t make any sound when he laughs, but that somehow makes his super-wide-mouth full body laugh all the more irresistible.

Lucas’s great passion these days is reading.  Or more specifically, page turning.  While most toys seem to bore him after a short while, he lights up every time he sees a book coming his way.  It doesn’t seem to matter to him whether it’s a book he’s read a thousand times or for the first time, whether it’s a cardboard page book, a cloth book, or a paper book.  His Gramma obliged him over and over and over again, holding books at just the right angle so he could grab and turn the pages.  In the video below he’s so happy turning pages that his feet are wiggling in delight.