Recently, Miles has started developing a fondness for mazes. Introduced to them on the back of a children’s menu at some point, he now actively seeks them out, going so far as to specifically pick out food when the boxes feature mazes on the back. So when we told him he was going to a corn maze in Shelby, NC this weekend, he could scarcely contain his excitement.
He very quickly devised a plan for successfully navigating the maze and shared it with me. First, he said we’d need to take paper and his crayons with us. Next, once inside the maze, I was to hoist him up, lifting him high enough to get an aerial view of the entire cornfield. He would then sketch out the entire maze using the crayons and paper we brought, after which Miles would complete the maze on paper and have a map to the finish. A simple enough plan, to be sure, but sadly one that failed to take into account the height of the cornstalks.
There were plenty of other activities for him to enjoy to varying levels. He was very interested in the ropes/obstacle course until he actually stepped foot on it and realized the platforms were moving. Also of interest were the giant bales of hay he could climb, although he ultimately decided there were too many far more confident kids clambering around on them and left to find something a bit more isolated.
A couple of his favorite activities, however, were the apple and corn launchers, where he attempted to fire the respective produce into the air to hit a truck on the far side of a field.
His self-admitted favorite attraction was “the slide.”
My favorite? Probably this.
And of course Miles was very excited to pick out pumpkins at the end of the day. So much so, in fact, that he declined to heed our warnings about staying close and ran off into the pumpkin patch on his mission to find the perfect gourd.
The Perils (& Pride) of Paternity 