One thing we've been trying to do with Sydney is to go to the park. She loves to be outside and unfortunately the weather is getting colder so our remaining park days are probably very limited.
So what does an 11 month old do at the park you might ask.
Sydney's favorite park activity is clearly swinging. We put her in the swing and swing her really high. Meghan usually tickles her feet as Sydney swings forward and I stand behind pushing her. The tickling gets lots of giggles. As we've done this, we've wondered whether she was having a good time or not because occasionally she gets a worried facial expression but clearly she thinks this is great fun. In fact the last two times we've pulled her out of the swing, she's cried because she wanted to swing more.
Sydney's second favorite activity is walking on the retaining wall that surrounds the play area. We hold her hands and she walks from one end of the wall to the other. It's really funny when she comes to the corners of the wall because there are some railed concrete "?towers?" and she tries to step up on them as if they are just another step. (this is the same baby that attempts to climb on the bed and couch via the absurdly large step technique).
As a side note, one day we were taking a break after walking around the wall when a squirrel darted from the bushes, across the play ground, and right past us (about 4 ft away from Sydney) at full speed. She jerked, pointed, and looked at us. Crazy rabid Des Plaines Squirrels.
Sydney is not sure what to think of the slide. The first time we put her down the slide, seemed to like it. For the record, she is indeed too small for this and looks like a rag doll going down it. BUT we always try to let her experience things so we gave it a shot in case she liked it. Anyway, she can't sit up on it so she goes down laying down. Amusingly, all of her short hair stands on end due to the static. We probably put her down it 4 or 5 times during that trip. The next time we went to the park, Sydney liked the slide less and might have gone down twice. This last time she CLEARLY didn't want to go down the slide. Fair enough. No slide for the Wee Beastie.
Sydney likes the Teeter Totter but it's totally impractical to put a 20lb baby on one end an a 165lb parent on the other. We push on one end though and she rides up and down with a grin on her face.
Hopefully we'll have a warm stretch soon and we can go back.