More Beach time and an Unexpected Encounter

Yesterday we spent six hours at the beach...so much fun.  I think Lucas has adjusted to the "taste" of the ocean.  He had a blast!

The waves still were not the best for surfing, but I think Isaac and Jack still had a fun time playing in the ocean.  The crystal clear water was just amazing.  And Isaac and Jack and Annabelle saw a Manatee swim by.  That was cool!

Lucas sat for the longest time just playing in the sand yesterday by himself, creating things and digging in the sand.  At one point he looked at me and pointed to a boy, apx. 10 yrs old, running across the sand that was missing a foot.  The boy flew by so fast that I never would have noticed, but with Lucas sitting in the sand and the boy running right past him, he noticed.

Then we looked around the beach and found where he was "parked" with his family.  My sweet friend Sharon "encouraged" me to go talk to the mom.  We wanted to make sure not to go over there while the boy was not there, just in case it would have made him uncomfortable.  It took me a little while to get up the guts for some reason, but we finally went over to her.  We found out the boy had the exact same "issue" Lucas does, except just on one leg.  He was born without a fibula in that leg, and before he could even walk, he had his first surgery to remove his foot, and was given a prosthetic.  He had everything done at Shriners Hopsital.  We saw his prosthetic leg/foot standing there on his beach towel and had a nice conversation with the mom.

Lucas was hesitant to come over to us while we were talking to her.  And we asked the mom if the boy would come chat with us if he felt comfortable, but they were heading out, and either didn't have the time, or he was not comfortable, so we didn't actually talk to him.

But, Lucas and I had a conversation after they left.  I tried explaining to him the boy had the same issue as he does.  He pointed to his soda can and made the circle of the top of the soda can and noticed that was what the boy's leg looked like at the bottom.  Kind of round.  His prosthetic was about as long as his lower leg, with a foot/shoe attached at the bottom.  So even though he had the lower leg still attached the prosthetic was like a sleeve going over the lower leg.

My gut tells me that Lucas thought that if he had his legs/feet removed that they would just sew new ones back on?  Not quite sure on that one.  He did point to his ankle area and make the cutting motion and then say "ouch, ouch".  I said, yes it would hurt for a little while, but tried to get him to look at the boy and how he was running on the beach.   I'm not saying that would be easy for him, but that he would recover and get back to playing again.

The mom had high praises for Shriner's Hospital.  We've been meaning to get our application in to them and I think I'm going to work on that tomorrow.

So it was an unexpected moment at the beach.  I would have missed the whole thing if Lucas hadn't noticed it.  But, it was a good "little" moment to help us enter into some more conversation--little by little.  We had not really started talking about these details yet with him since our appointment with the doctor.  We wanted to wait until the summer was winding down and language development just tuned up a little more.  I want to explain to him how his little legs are made and show him more about what can be done, etc.  But, God just keeps dropping things like this in our laps that create natural discussion.  And I love that Lucas was the one that noticed it in the first place.  That was cool!