A Series of Unfortunate Events

If you teach your kids to love museums, they're going to want to visit museums.

If your kids want to visit museums, you may want to offer them a trip to a museum in semi-distant Mobile, AL (2 hour drive) as an incentive for cleaning the house during winter break.

If they clean the house, you'll be compelled to comply with the promised reward.

If you take them to the Exploreum in Mobile, the kids will have a really great time.

If they're having fun, you'll keep them past the girls' naptimes.

If you keep them past their naptimes, the baby will definitely want to eat.

When the baby wants to eat, you'll take the older two back to the Wharf of Wonder 5-and-under exhibit area so you can nurse in peace.

While you're peacefully nursing your baby, you might notice most of the parents suddenly looking concerned and glancing around curiously.

If you look around to see what they're so nervous about, you will see a pair of naked 2-year-old buns that you definitely recognize.

When you recognize the naked backside of a very quick 2-year-old, you will have to quickly detach your tired hungry baby, yell loudly at the crowd, "She's mine! I'm on it!" and chase down the older girl, stopping on the way to pick up various items of clothing.

Once you've redressed her, you will warn her that any repeat of earlier behavior will result in the immediate termination of the museum experience.

You will quietly return to your nursing bench, ignoring the looks of the bemused parents who are undoubtedly thinking, "That lady needs to get it together."

If you choose to continue feeding your baby, two minutes later a grumpy-sounding man will mumble in your direction, "She's doing it again."

You will once again detach baby, rush back to the ball pit, grab 2-year-old and redress.

Since you're the kind of parent who keeps promises (both the "I'll take you to a museum" and "I'll take you away from the museum" kind), you'll have to pack up all three kids, buckling two in your double stroller and coaxing a justifiably disappointed 5-year-old into walking away voluntarily.

If you have to remove them all while they were enjoying themselves, your kids will be sad. Maybe even angry. One of them (the one not in a stroller) might charge at you from behind on the sidewalk as you leave the museum.

If he charges you in his angry and tired state, he may miss you and instead flail dramatically in the air.

If he flails dramatically enough, he will smack his head on a fluted cement pillar and start spurting blood at an alarming rate.

When he starts bleeding profusely in the street in a strange city a hundred miles from home, you may feel slightly overwhelmed.

You will rely on your faith in museum staff and head back inside.

When you wheel back in to the museum and up to the front desk, the museum staff will react first with pity and then with a bit of revulsion when they see your very bloody son/stroller/sweatshirt-headwrap.

They will escort you to an office and call 911.

If your child injures himself in the near proximity of a museum, the staff might be nervous that you will sue them and shower your children with attention and swag from the gift shop.

When the EMTs arrive, they will assure you that your child will indeed need stitches and that you can't all fit in an ambulance.

If you don't want to send your scared and bloody 5-year-old in the ambulance all by himself, you will instead opt to take him to the ER yourself.

You will get all 3 kids loaded into the car, thank God for GPS on your phone and head for your nearest hospital.

If you are very unlucky, the ER will be very busy. They will only have 1 seat for all 4 of you and make you wait for 2 hours before they take you to triage.

If you are silly enough to stay and wait, you will eventually make your way to a room where a nurse will look at you with pity and point out the TV.

You will vow never to say anything bad about Spongebob Squarepants as long as you live.

If you are still there 2 and half hours after you arrived at the hospital, the nurse may come back and ask, "Are you sure there's no one else that can take your other 2 children?"

When you are done envisioning her head exploding in slow motion, you will calmly reply, "No ma'am, there's no one else."

Eventually you will hold your daughters tight and face them away as you watch the nurses put 3 staples in your son's head. You will be fairly certain that lidocaine shot didn't work.

If you make it through this, you will want to reward your children with something so awesome for being so patient for the last 3 hours.

You will think about offering to take them to your home museum on Monday. Then you will offer them McDonald's for dinner instead.