What Was GREAT about June: iPhones and Pools and Progress – Oh My!

In my previous post, I shared some of the more challenging parts of June. The month has brought some great things, too! I’ll start with the end: Jeremy came home from work Tuesday... WITH NEW iPHONES! It was an awesome surprise! I don’t know what it says about me that my eyes welled up with tears when he told me... but I don't care. : ) It was so exciting. Thank you, Jeremy! Now each Roberts family member has some sort of iDevice. Thank you, Apple. We are drinking the Apple Kool-Aid at our house!


Summer’s arrival meant we finally hit the pool: both at my parents’ and at Jeremy’s. Luke LOVES the water, which bodes so well for the cruise we’re taking in about a week. While I only have a video from my parents’ (and Blogger is very finicky about the upload of videos), I have a couple of pics of Luke digging the pool at Grandma and Grandpa’s in Winona. Thanks so much for this pool- we can’t wait to blow it up and play with it at our house, too!

The best thing about this month is how much great progress Luke is making. His imitation of language is SO MUCH BETTER. Even though he is not yet using words all that functionally or even appropriately, we are finally getting some repeating of words: up to 35-40 with his speech teacher at school! Yay! He said “Hi Daddy” a couple of weeks ago… I know that is not even a big deal for most parents of almost-three year olds, but we were near tears (Jeremy out of happiness, and, I’ll admit, I out of jealousy – still haven’t heard that sweet boy call me “Mommy,” but I have faith it will come). As I’ve said before, he knows every letter of the alphabet, and he even knows their sounds. He was playing with some of his letter toys, and with EACH ONE – no joke – he’d say “B says ‘buh’,” “Q says ‘qwuh’,” and so forth. For all 26 letters. He’s so smart!


Another highlight was that at the end of May, Luke’s teacher emailed to see if we’d approve for his placement in a Social Skills Class at his school. If you don’t know much about autism, here’s an insight. For parents of a neuro-typical near-3 year old, something like group play is a given, not remotely a big deal. But the prospect of Luke being ready to take tiny steps towards peer interaction? Well, Jeremy and I were both teary-eyed and giddy at the prospect. We were and are so excited! He has a group class with kids his age on Mondays, and this week, Luke has attended a Social Skills camp every afternoon. He was weepy at the drop offs, BUT he’s done great each day! Here he is yesterday morning in preparation for “summer wear” day. Isn’t he handsome?

He also did some great projects, like making a beach towel and creating this mural. While I am not totally sure Luke did all of the coloring and painting, I treasure it nonetheless.

The highlight of our month is the awesome progress Luke is making. I am so proud of him. Most kids his age don’t “go to work” four days a week doing ABA and speech therapy (well over 50 hours a month) – and that’s without any home therapy sessions – but Luke does, and he is such a sweet and compliant trooper. Our greatest joys right now are hearing his sweet voice move from babbles to words (and songs, which are AWESOME) and watching his sweet personality continue to emerge. We are immensely thankful for how blessed we’ve been with our Luke!


I hope each of you has a great 4th of July celebrating with family and friends! Have fun, be safe, and I’ll see you in late July, when I post pictures from our VACATION! Can’t wait!