Lucas Camilo

We stuck around home for Memorial Day weekend and though the weather wasn’t great, we enjoyed a visit from Gramma, as well as walks around the neighborhood, and fun activities like composing our own Tyrannosaurus Rex medley, which we’re officially launching on youtube today:

Lucas worked with me to choose segments from his six favorite songs about T Rex (can you believe that we actually know six different songs about one dinosaur!?!) and then picked out the various pictures for the youtube video as well.  I told him that there’s a good chance that this sucker is going viral… and he said, “what’s going viral?”  Needless to say, he’s doing his part by insisting on watching it 10 times a day… and you should do the same to get us on our way!

In other dinosaur news, last week the first dinosaur fossil ever discovered in Washington state was unveiled to the world. We haven’t made it to the Burke Museum yet to check it out in person, but everyone who has seen the news has been talking about it with Lucas.  Amazingly, this comes on the heals of a the unveiling of a vegetarian therapod (!) discovered by a 7 year old in Chile and dubbed Chilesaurus, as well as a new member of the velociraptor family called Saurornitholestes langstoni.  Wow, its a great time to be a dinosaur lover.

Oh, and did we mention that Nonna and Papa brought twin dinosaur pajamas for Lucas and Ida back from their recent trip to England?  They both seem even more excited to cuddle before bed when sporting the new threads.

Of course, our life as a family isn’t just about dinosaurs.  As Ida grows – and boy is she growing FAST, already having doubled her birth weight to over 16 pounds – its fun to see Lucas continue to engage her, follow her movements and actions, and comment on how she’s doing.  (Also, we promise more of an update about Ida soon.)  In particular, Lucas can always tell when Ida is smiling – even if she’s on the other side of the room and he’s working on his iPad or reading a book.  Basically, he picks up on the joy in someone’s voice in seeing her light up, or their laugh, or the change to baby talk, and then he exclaims “IS IDA SMILING??”

Another fun tradition we’ve begun is the weekly “Bath-a-palooza” in which Lucas and Ida bathe side-by-side — him in his mesh bath chair, which we can strap him into for safety, and her in her little plastic tub on the floor, which she promptly splashes half of the water out of.  Getting Lucas into the bath is a bit of an ordeal so we don’t do it every night, but its always fun when we do.

Sunday evening, post-bath p.j. snuggle

Gramma and Ida

There is just a month left of kindergarten in Seattle, so Lucas and his friends are starting to visit the first grade to get a taste of life with more order and more quiet raising of hands.  It’s exciting to imagine Lucas in an environment that he’ll love: books with bigger words, a quieter setting where he might be heard better in the classroom.  But we’ve loved his kindergarten class so much — Mr. McCullough is such a loving teacher, and the kids and their families have been incredibly welcoming to Lucas.  So the transition feels a little scary, too. (Can you find Lucas in Garden Class?)

Our big parenting news is that we went out on Wednesday!  We were able to leave Lucas with his nurse and Ida with her cousins (and aunt and uncle), and Burke and I went out to a show.  It was really fun and a little bit surreal to be out without our kids.  I love Burke for being an amazing dad, and I could watch him play with Lucas and Ida forever.  But it was also refreshing to remember that we like hanging out even when we don’t have kids in our arms or a dinosaur album on the stereo.

I started to write about Mothers’ Day the other day but I decided it sounded too dour, so I scrapped it and just said Happy Mothers Day to all the mothers I know.  We all certainly deserve celebration.  But “Motherhood” is so fraught with pedestals, shoulds, guilt, and domestic appliances that I sometimes have trouble relating to the idea.  And then we have friends who are amazing women and don’t have kids, and I feel weird about this day that celebrates motherhood as the pinnacle of womanhood.  (Fortunately, someone else wrote that article better than I did, here.  Its short and worth a read.)

But I am very proud of being a mom, and I certainly don’t mind people celebrating me doing a good job of it.  And my role as mother grows to encompass two kids, I keep thinking about how much Lucas has taught me about how to be a mom.  He’s taught me crazy, amazing life lessons.  How to be steady even with fear and the unknown.  How to love a baby with my whole, exploding heart when I could only hold him an hour a day.  How to read books over and over and over again.  How to teach others about experiences of disability.  How to be deeply passionate about animals.  How to distinguish a zuniceratops from a styracasaurus.  Already Ida is starting to teach us new lessons, and I know I’ll get to reshape and expand my understanding of “mothering” to fit her needs and brilliance, too.  So why not celebrate my motherhood?

The other reason I couldn’t bring myself to say anything cynical about mothers day is the moms (and dads) I’ve gotten to know in the world of disability.  You all are a fierce, dedicated, fun crowd with some huge hearts.  I think about our MTM family that we know mostly through facebook and the family conference, people like Shannon Mashinchi and Mark and Erin Ward who give so much to other families as they care for their own kids.  I think about the amazing radical parents we met through My Baby Rides the Short Bus.  And I think about the parents in Seattle who we’ve connected to through support groups.  I think of the mom who saw Lucas and me on the playground a couple of years ago.  She walked up to us and briefly introduced her son who was a year or two older than Lucas and also had mobility limitations.   She gave me her name and number and said we should meet so she could “download” everything she knew about the transition to kindergarten.  No small talk, just immediate connection and an eagerness to be helpful and generous with everything she knew might be useful to us.  I feel so proud to have joined this tribe of mothers and parents.  So, happy Mothers’ Day to all of us.  And I pronounce Friends-of-Kids Day to celebrate all of our friends who help us raise these amazing kids, too.  Happy Day to all of you.