Salem Willows Park

We live about a half hour from historic Salem Massachusetts. One of our favorite summer spots is Salem Willows Park. It is a historic park on a peninsula that juts out into Salem Harbor. It is the home of America's first ice cream cone and home to a 145 year old carousal. Its a great place to picnic and has lots of entertainment for the little man. He loves the kiddie rides.

And of course we had some ice cream for speech therapy.

Speech Therapy and Homemade Bubble Solution

Last week we finally discovered why Alex has been having such a hard time articulating certain letters. As I had mentioned before he is in speech therapy. After a month of therapy with a very inexperienced speech therapist, I switched him to another. She is great! Alex likes to go to speech now. She incorporates therapy in play and recognized that he he weak facial muscles. She asked another therapist that specializes in oral motor problems to come to one of his appointments. The second she saw him she knew that he had very low facial muscle tone, which was preventing him from forming his mouth to say certain letters. Turns out is all stems back from him being born a couple weeks early, at 38 weeks. Muscle tone develops in the last couple weeks of pregnancy and starts at the feet going up. So we have to do activities to exercise his facial muscles, and eventually he should be able to articulate letter sounds correctly. Blowing bubbles is one of his exercises. So I found a recipe and made some bubble solution.

 I couldn't get any photos of him trying to blow the bubbles. After a while he just wanted to wave the wand and let the wind create the bubbles.

Here is the recipe that I used to make the bubble solution. It worked pretty well, and made some big bubbles. We just filled up some old bubble containers and used some wands we already had.

1/2 cup of dishwashing liquid
2 cups of water
2 teaspoons of corn syrup

Linking to Outdoor Play linky at Mama Pea Pod

I Heart Faces {Lets Hear It For the Boys}

My two favorite boys!

 Check out all the great "Boy" photos at I Heart Faces

I Heart Faces {From A Distance}

I love this photo! Hubby used to do this to Alex all the time and he LOVED it! Of course it would give me a heart failure everytime. lol

I instantly thought of this photo for this weeks I Heart Faces Photo Challenge. Check out all the other great "From a Distance" photos at

We are still here....

This week it finally stopped raining (not that I am complaining, the rain is nothing compared to the catastrophic weather in some parts of the country) so we have been doing a lot of outside activities. The sun is out and we are loving it!

We went to a fun birthday party for Alex's cousin.

A super fun bounce house

Alex's 1st sack race

Pinata loot

 We visited Nana (Alex's Great Grandmother) in Maine.  Daddy and Alex took a spin on her lawn tractor. LOL

We went to the beach and played in the sand and some warm tide pools.

We also planted our vegetable garden. I can't wait till it starts growing. We planted string beans, cucumbers, bell peppers, carrots, spinach, lettuce, cantaloupe, pumpkins, zucchini and sunflowers :) Garden photos to come soon!

Check out some more great outdoor play at  Mama Pea Pods Outdoor Play Blog Hop

Some More Photo Challeges

Show and Tell "From Below" at Paper Heart Camera

Show:

 Tell:
Alex looking down from a big rock on one of our rainy day explorations.

"Blue" Photo Challenge at The Paper Mama

My blue eyed boy ♥  

I Heart Faces {Yellow}

Alex sitting in a big excavator at "Touch A Truck" Day.

Check out all the "Yellow" Photography at I Heart Faces