I took my eyes off her to read all of 5 words...
When I stepped out to see which of 3 directions she could of gone...I fully expected to see her standing there looking back at me, waiting for me to follow her.
I calming, yet sternly chirped to my husband, "Celia took off running" and jetted off in the direction that would be most difficult to find her. I looked back and my husband was following me (hmmm, guess he doesn't know how this works, "go the other way and look!" I exclaimed).
I'm pretty sure she could not have gotten this far - so back to the canoe exhibit I went. We had just been talking to one of the staff there 5 minutes before all of this. Only when I got to her, she was talking to a middle-aged man and his pre-teen soon. Initially my body language wasn't enough to demonstrate the urgency in my head (my heart was skipping beats by this point), so I decided to invade some personal space and Dad cued his son to move on (Thank GOD!)
I never talked so fast in my life:
Ilostmy3yearoldgirl*breath*shewaswearingapurpleshirtwithdarkpurpleheartsonit*breath*blackpantandboots.
Immediately, the staff member radioed out the news to all the staff, like it was a common occurrence (and I'm sure it was). I quickly added, "she has blond curly hair and her name is Celia", before she had time to finish what I had originally told her.
I wandered aimlessly, in all honesty, telling myself there was no reason to want to cry at this point, so I choked it back. I could see staff scurrying around and finally I heard over someones radio that "the family has been reunited". I knew she wasn't with me, so I figured she was with my husband whom I hadn't seen since we spilt up in different directions.
When my daughter came around the corner hand in hand with one of the museum staff, she was unphased and said "I wanted to go on the airplane". I dropped to my knees gave her a hug and face to face told her how much she scared me for running off by herself. She didn't get what the fuss was about, she just wanted to find that airplane again (which we never did find).
This all happened at the Museum of Science & Technology in Ottawa - now my least favorite museum- because of the unorganized floor plan. I actually had a premonition that if I were to lose a child, it would be there when we first arrived. The ratio of parents to children was good though and my husband and I had worked out that we would each follow one of the 2 kids.
I often think I may plan a Museum outing with the KOHORT group, but now I know for sure that's never going to happen while I have more than one child to keep track of. :)
All said and done the munchkins enjoyed themselves, as did we despite my worst nightmare. Can you believe that all happened in about a 5 minute time frame?
Does anyone have a similar story to share?
