I'm a little slow figuring things out, so it just recently dawned on me that if I want to keep Hurricane Mila from destroying the world, I should probably take her places where she's most comfortable. Playgrounds, trampoline parks, amusement parks, they're all her jam. If the mission is to run and jump and be crazy, she's right where she belongs.
This all occurred to me when we were at a trampoline park a few weeks ago. Girlfriend ran at 1000% the entire time we were there. Bounce. Bounce. Bounce. Climb. Jump. Bounce. Bounce. Bounce. For as much as she loved every second of literally climbing the walls, she was also ... compliant? That's not really the right word. It's more that she had her listening ears on. It's really hard to redirect that kid even when she super needs to be redirected, but it worked that day. "Hey, let's go that way!" and "Let's take turns, please!" and "We have to put the toys away before we get more of them." It all worked. Magically.
So just imagine how great those listening ears work when we're at an amusement park! SO GREAT. We took a quick run up to Cedar Point this weekend, which is basically Mila's definition of heaven, and she was SO GOOD.
Cedar Point is extra magical and stuff because Mila can ride a whole bunch of stuff there. Sometimes you look at a ride and you think "there's no way she's big enough for that" but then she is and of course she's game for it. The kid was asking to ride Top Thrill Dragster, for goodness sake. She meant it, too. I don't think there is a single ride she wouldn't happily go on.
We started the day with a conversation about how we needed to use our listening ears all day or we wouldn't be allowed to ride anything. And then, for the most part, Mila used those listening ears. I mean, I only had to yell at her for standing up in the stroller about 4569035 times. That's WAY better than normal. She waited in lines nicely. She sat patiently waiting for her turn.
And she had the best day ever. She declared as much when we got home at 2:30 and she was suddenly wide awake. And jumping on the bed.
We're going to need to move to Sandusky.
