Happy Father's Day

"As long as he is happy."  This is the parenting mantra of Bobby's wonderful Daddy.   

 Parenting a child with autism is not easy, but my awesome husband is doing his absolute best and I honestly couldn't be more proud of how he is handling his role of autism dad.

 He is right there by Bobby's side to participate in Bobby's favorite activities.

 Also right by Bobby's side to try new experiences.

 My husband is FUNNY!!  We laugh a lot in this household, and when he gets Bobby bellylaughing, a full, loud laugh, well forget about it, we are all in a laughing fit.

 He is the life of the party when we have other autism families over to play.  Remote control cars, Rhino rides, airplanes, throwing ball, building a fire......just total boy fun.

 On a boring, rainy day inside, Daddy becomes the train engineer or race track builder.

 He even plans Daddy/Bobby days out where they go out riding the Rhino all day......the best days ever in Bobby's eyes!

 Bobby's safety is the foremost thought that Daddy has at all times.

 He is right by Bobby's side to ensure his safety.

These two boys love riding together.  Daddy had Bobby riding a four wheeler from the beginning.

 Daddy is always fun.....letting Bobby play in the water.

 And these poor boys, yes we all need to feel bad for them.....they do all of this while Mommy has a camera in their face.

 Daddy is the engineer in making the world a little easier for Bobby to navigate.  He needs training wheels for a bicycle, fine.....Daddy makes that happen!

 He knows all of the words to Bobby's favorite songs and shows and isn't afraid to belt out the mail time song from Blue's Clues at any time!

 Daddy does his best to help Bobby try new experiences and help broaden his skills and hobbies, even letting him use his tools to practice putting in screws and hammering nails.

 Daddy is just always FUN!

 Daddy will help Bobby be first in line to make sure that he gets his preferred seat on the train.

 There to talk with the doctors and specialists to make sure that we are doing all that we can to help our beautiful boy.

 Holiday traditions are important in this household and the Christmas tree is always the number one tradition.

 Sure Bobby, Daddy will figure this out for you.

 Daddy will always be right by Bobby's side!

I could look at pictures of these two loves of my life all day long.  Happy Father's Day to my wonderful husband.  You truly are an autism daddy rock star!

Good-bye 4th Grade!!!

For those who are new to Bobby's World, we had a couple of school years in the past that were less than successful. Thankfully those are in the past and the present has been exciting.  This school year Bobby has started reading!!!  Reading!!  Yes, I'm gonna say it again....READING!!!!  His autism teacher tried a reading computer program with him last year and he had zero interest.  This year, he was ready!!  He has been working on the edmark reading program.  It teaches reading using sight word memorization and Bobby has been memorizing words like crazy.  His ABA therapist began teaching phonics reading, which his autism teacher added to his classroom work as well.  Bobby knows all of his letter sounds and is now able to sound out 3 letter words and with the combination of phonics and sight words, he is reading far better than I could have ever imagined!!!!!!!  Yay Bobby!!  Yay Reading!!  Yay 4th Grade!!!  He just had to do it on his own time table!!

Bobby is also writing!!  Writing is taking place much more in ABA therapy and he is learning to type in the classroom.  He can write all upper and lower case letters and numbers to 20.  He still required some prompting, but he is progressing more and more in his writing every day.  Bobby is also beginning the touch math program, which is used a great deal to teach math in the special needs community.  He can count with one to one correspondence up to 20 and is beginning simple addition. Yay Bobby!!!  Yay Writing!!  Yay Math!!  Yay Typing!!  Yay 4th Grade!!

Due to all of the snow days this school year, the school year was extended until June 11th.

 Getting ready to catch the school bus for the last day of 4th grade.

I had to go to a work training on the last day of school and offered to go pick up Bobby when the training was finished so that Ms. Kim could work on her end of the year paperwork.  Plus, Bobby's allergies were a mess and he pretty much just wanted to go home and rest.

When I arrived at school, I went directly into his classroom like I do every other day.  Apparently Bobby saw me from the cafeteria as I walked by because his aide said that he jumped up and said "see you in the morning" and wanted to go to his classroom now so that he could go home with Mom.  He went right over to his cubbie when he walked in the door to get his backpack and go home!!

Ok Bobby, Mommy has her camera in her hand, you know what that means!!!  I need some pictures of you in your classroom and with Ms. Kim before we can leave!!

 We may or may not have sent Ms. Kim some flowers as a small token of just how much we appreciate all that she has done for Bobby.

4th grade is over, well almost!!  Bobby does have 4 weeks of ESY (extended school year/summer school) coming up in a few weeks, but I don't really consider that 4th grade, it's ESY, which he loves.
 
To celebrate ending the school year, Daddy made some plans!!  He arranged for Bobby to take a boat ride with a co-worker because Bobby refused to get off of the pontoon at the mall earlier this year!! We didn't have any trouble getting Bobby onto the dock or onto the boat.  He was ready for this adventure.  However, he was like Houdini in his ability to get his life jacket off in 2 seconds flat!!

He wanted to be the captain of this vessel and preferred the captain's chair!!  His favorite part was going down the river fast with the wind in his face.

We dropped the anchor and got out to swim.  Bobby moved around the boat and found a couple of perches that he liked.

He really wanted to jump into the water, you could literally see it in his face, however he wanted to jump without his life jacket.  We finally gave a little push and got him in, and in true Houdini form, he was out of the jacket in seconds.  We gave him some noodles and a ski belt to give him some floating help.  The water felt great on the 90 degree day.

Our first weekend of summer vacation was a wash out with rain in the forecast all week!  I sure hope that it holds of for Tuesday, I have quite a few plans for a super fun summer vacation day!!!!

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