My weekend freakout at the museum

This weekend, my husband and I took the Man-cub to the Museum of Discovery and Science. We thought he'd enjoy seeing the kid-friendly exhibits. However, we found out one of the exhibits isn't very kid-friendly, and the Man-cub fell down a flight of stairs. Because I try to keep things light-hearted on this blog, I'll talk more about that later in the post. First, the fun stuff.

The museum has a special exhibit now through Sept. 7 called Frogs: A Chorus of Colors. We love frogs, and my husband fancies himself an amateur herpetologist, so we had to go and see for ourselves.











Would you look at the size of that frog?! I'm a little suspect. I don't think this one was real.

The frogs entertained the Man-cub only for so long. I don't think someone who's just short of three feet tall and doesn't understand the concept of camouflage (thank goodness!) can see the frog exhibits well.

So we quickly moved on, like the Gizmo City exhibit:



and the Runways to Rockets exhibit:



Then we went downstairs to the Discovery Center, which is an area where kids can play with tables of soapy water, the bow of a sailboat, climb through tunnels in the New River, fight over balls that look like oranges play in a make-believe citrus farm and go up a construction tower.

It was the construction tower that nearly did us all in.

The Man-cub stepped up into the structure, and climbed the stairs to the second level of the tower. I was right behind him. As soon as we got to the top, though, he wanted to go back down. A woman and child were coming up the stairs then, though, so we had to wait because the stairs are wide enough for just one person. Just as the stairs were clear, the Man-cub started down. I had to wait for the woman to pass me to get to the stairs, and when I did, my son started falling. You know how these kinds of things happen in warp speed and slow-motion at the same time? Yeah. That's exactly how it was. I couldn't get to him fast enough to stop his fall. I thought he was going to stop falling partway down because he paused, but then he kept tumbling down. I finally caught up to him just before he got to the bottom. He was screaming, and I was screaming -- and praying, too, that he hadn't broken his back, or neck, or an arm or something. I just held him while he cried, and my husband and I looked him over to see if he was all right. My husband gathered up the things that had fallen out of my purse on my way down -- I must have dropped it while trying to get to the Man-cub.

Fortunately, he is fine and appears to have only bumped his forehead. But it really concerns me that an exhibit billed for children six and younger doesn't have a hand rail on the tower that is at a small child's height. (Can I get a "Big DUH?!") The stairs my son fell down are metal, and the sides are protected by a bare sheet of Plexiglass. There is a rail of sorts at the top of the Plexiglass, but it's too tall for small children to reach. I know if there had been a hand rail there that my son could hold, he would have, because whenever he goes up or down the stairs he holds on if there is something there. These stairs didn't give him that opportunity, and I am writing the museum to tell them this is a horrendous safety hazard.

Our son seemed fine, but my husband and I were shaken up for more than an hour. I just kept visualizing the Man-cub falling again and again.

I'll be at the salon getting my new gray hairs touched up.