Lucas Camilo

Last weekend Lucas made his first trip to Oregon!  On Friday morning we packed Lucas and all our travel gear into the car and made the three and a half hour drive to Beaverton, where Krista’s mom lives.  Given all the outings we’ve reported on lately, this may seem like no big deal, but it’s still a really long drive for Lucas as he gets tired sitting up for extended periods of time.  But he did great, and we arrived at without a hitch.

Besides wanting Lucas to get to see Gramma’s house and the great state of Oregon, the main reason we went was so that Lucas could meet his extended family and our friends in Oregon.  So on Saturday afternoon Susan hosted a backyard party with fifty or so invited guests – mostly the Hanson family and old friends.

(A background note: Three years ago at this time, when Krista was still pregnant, we planned a backyard party at Susan’s house to celebrate our relationship and coming baby, a sort of post-commitment-ceremony west coast reception.  Susan made all the decorations, ordered the cake, bought the beer…  But then Krista went into labor on the plane ride to Seattle and we never made it to Portland, and then Lucas was born and the rest is history.)

So we were excited to finally be making it together – now with Lucas – to Oregon.  But we were also a little nervous about the whole thing since Lucas often (understandably) clams up in high-pressure social situations, preferring to stick his nose in a book to trying to interact with a stream of new people.  We even went so far as to warn people that even though they’d been waiting nearly three years to meet Lucas, he might not act very excited to meet them.

But then he proved us wrong.  All of Krista’s aunts, uncles, cousins, and old family friends, college friends, solidarity friends, and more came out to hang out and celebrate meeting Lucas.  And Lucas greeted just about everyone with a  “nice to meet you!” – having recently learned the phrase – and he soaked up the attention.  He seemed to really enjoy getting gifts (as a kid who likes the familiar, he hasn’t cared about presents much in the past), and he especially loved gifts that involved stickers, the alphabet or Nemo.  He loved meeting his two-year-old second-cousin Mara, so much so that he seemed unfazed as she took away his new stuffed Nemo over and over again.  He was happy about all the people who knew about his love of books, and he happily read stories with with anyone who sat down next to him.  Lucas even agreed to go outside and sit in Burke’s lap for a while on the deck (usually he would insist fairly quickly on returning to the couch to read books).

Of course we want Lucas to be able to be fully himself, even if that means he is sometimes an anti-social bookworm.  But it was really wonderful for us to see him so happy and social as we introduced him to so many new people.  At the end of the night as we tucked him into bed, Krista told him what a great job he did at the party.  Lucas responded with, “The people said, ‘nice to meet you!'”  And we told him: yes, he has many people who love him… and yes, they are happy to meet him!