Earlier in March I wrote about how we went to Discovery Gateway and how Naomi LOVED it. Well because she loved it so much I knew we’d be going back and buy a membership, because why the heck not, right? So that’s what we did this week, we bought a membership and then experienced a disaster of an hour at Discovery Gateway.

I’ll get to why in a minute, but first let’s talk about the dynamics of Discovery Gateway.

First. DG is a great place for parents to stand around and judge each other.

I mean, seriously. It’s like a constant judge fest. And I’m happy to admit I took part 100%. Wow, really? You’re just going to let your 4-year-old take a ping-pong ball out of my daughter’s hand like that? Hey tigermom, you should totes yell at your kid some more in public! Really, boss, leather jacket and sweats? Really? Of course none of these things are said out loud, that would just be rude, anything that needs to be said can be said with the eyes.

Second. DG makes you hate other people’s children.

Look, there’s like 500 of them running around and all of them are stepping on your toes and pushing your darling child out of the way, it’s hard to find any of them adorable because, well let’s just face it you guys, they’re not, only your own is adorable.

Third. All the employees look like they want to kill themselves.

Again, this is something you can see in their eyes. It’s the look of “WTF was I thinking applying for this job?” Oh, you love working with kids? That’s great you’re hired! Here’s your job description: Pick up all the toys that children throw that the parents don’t pick up – this will be ALL THE TOYS. Keep all areas of the play areas clean and organized. Good luck. Stop older children from peeing in the water area. Vomit cleanup duty. Must like loud noises. Bless those brave souls.

So Naomi has been having a bit of an off week. Meaning she’s been more crabby than usual, which I guess for Naomi that means actually being crabby as opposed to just being chill. When we went to DG she was quite happy. She played in the water area, and didn’t even mind the jerk-kids taking the ping-pong balls out of her hand (the rage was all mine). Then we went to another area with a bunch of toys, but all she wanted to do was grab a toy and take it over to the water and throw it in. Of course I wouldn’t let her and that’s when the crying frustration came roaring out. So we wen’t to another section where she wanted to be the big kid taking things away from other kids, and there’s no way I’m going to let other parents judge me for that so I had to whisk her away to another area – cue crying frustration. Basically it was going from one play area to another until she found a reason to be frustrated which just had us ending up trying to climb a set of stairs that were labeled “STAFF ONLY” and so I couldn’t let her break the rule and she fell down in crying frustration and hit her head.

Ok, time to leave! At which point I realized that it was hailing outside and I parked in the wrong garage so we had to walk to it with no umbrella.

It’s ok. It will be better next time, and the next, right? After all we have a membership now so we can go as many times as it takes to replicate the cry-free experience of our very first time. Because that’s what parenting is all about, really. You will experience this in the way that I want you to! It’s good to be a parent.