Playgrounds, Slides & Swings

Izzie has discovered the wonderful world of the playground. She loves them, and every time we drive by one and she sees it out of the window she starts growling, talking and pointing. If we stop at one she can't walk fast enough to get there. It's hilarious.

Here we are playing at Pioneer Park and having a good time.



She's learning to love the tunnels and enclosed slides now, but I will soon show you why she learned to hate them.

Here's one of her learning to master the bridge. She had some problems with the steeper up and down parts in the beginning, but she now has a loose grasp on the concept of momentum and center of gravity.



She loves the whole "fort" idea that the play ground sets afford. She runs back and forth peeking through the bars and laughing. Sometimes she play peek-a-boo with you, and sometimes she thinks it's a game of chase. It's fun for us too.


Slides! Izzie knows parks more affectionately as slides because we always say "want to go slide?" At first it was a hold her hand as she went down. Then it was help her get situated and catch her at the bottom. Next came teaching her how to sit and scoot to the edge and then go. Then it was showing her how to climb back up the fortress to get back to the top of the slide. For a while she would climb up, sit down, scoot to the edge and then go down all on her own. Sometimes we still had to catch her if the slide was too short on the end. The longer ones she stops on her own, rolls over and scoots backwards off of them. Such a smart girl.

Here she is showing off her mad skilz.




And then there's swings. Yesterday I took her to the park and she sat in the swing for 25 minutes non stop. When I stopped pushing she signed more. The kid loves swings. She sat in this one at Pioneer for about 15 minutes checking everything out and having a good time.



We frequent the parks a few times a week now, and our goal is to visit each park at least once. It's fun for us because it's something new, and it's good for Izzie because it helps her learn more. Here she is taking a corner.


Remember how I said she trots off to the stairs to go do it again. Well, there she goes.


Here's the reason that she is leery of slides now. We did all of the slides at this particular park except one. When I asked her is she wanted to go on it she said yes. It was her first fully covered slide that you couldn't see all the way through, so I can understand her fear. That was probably compounded by the steepness and the consequential speed. The first time she went down she got stuck somewhere in the middle. I started calling her (I stayed at the bottom while mom took her to the top) and then when I heard movement I knew everything was OK. She popped out a few seconds later head first (deja vu) some how.

Nell and I determined that she got stuck because her shoes jammed up on the side of the slide. So what do we do? We take the shoes off to eliminate the problem. What do you think happened the next time that Izzie went (on her own accord of course)? Well since she doesn't weigh very much and her clothes provide the same resistance that mine would, she flew. If you've ever seen a kid or been a kid that went down a fast slide that turns you know that you come out somewhere on the side because of the g-force. Well, Izzie did the same thing. She came rocketing out of that thing, and ever since then she hasn't liked slides as much. Bummer.


So after that we were done sliding, but swings were still in.


Here we are playing at a park near out house. We didn't slide much because of what happened the day before, but we did run all over that thing.



Here's a couple of videos of her (pre big slide).





I should mention that she enjoys trying to take the shortcut back to the top of the slide by turning around and climbing it. Still hasn't worked yet.

That's what we've been up to in September. More to come though.