As the title indicates, we are now the proud owners of two real, live (for now) pets!
By "proud," I mean "extremely reluctant."
It began with S's end-of-year party at daycare a couple weeks ago, where for whatever reason, they decided to give each child a going-away present of a real live fish.
WHO DOES THAT???? Who thinks of parents bringing their toddlers home for a month with no daycare, and thinks, "you know what those people probably want? Another fragile, needy living being to care for!"
Maybe you all don't think of goldfish as being particularly needy. OK, maybe to you they aren't. But we're a family that managed to kill cactus. More than one cactus.
Of course, you could always choose to give the fish away or something. If you don't mind breaking your kid's heart.
So we brought our fish home, and Adi instantly fell in love with it and gave it a name that I've already forgotten. Adi has already named each and every one of the several dozen street cats living in this area, and my brain is out of room to remember these things.
She also started petting it. Yes, petting the fish. At least she didn't take it out of the water to hold it, like a friend's child did (more on that later).
In the meantime, N and D are asking questions like, "Can we feed him cereal?... Why not?... Can he go swimming in the bath?" and I'm mentally giving the fish 20% odds of living to see the weekend.
Later that day, we went to E's house, where we learned that their fish (given to E's little sister S, who is in daycare with our S) had returned its soul to its Maker a rather short time after arriving in their home (remember the child who took the fish out of the water to hold it? That was E's little brother).
While I tried to quell my feelings of guilty relief that someone else had managed to kill their fish before we killed ours, Adi was busy realizing that her fish could die, too. So then I told her that, yeah, goldfish sometimes don't live very long.
At first she was teary at the thought of her goldfish not living for long. But within 2 minutes, I overheard her and E debating over what they would do with its dead body - bury it? or feed it to Mitsy?
I had to remind her that her fish could very well still be alive. I think they were almost disappointed.
Anyway, our fish couldn't live in a bowl forever, and E's mom needed replacement fish for her broken-hearted toddler. So we went to the pet store and ended up with one little plastic fish tank each, two fish for her, and one more fish for us (I figured that if I had remembered the breed of fish right, they could be friends. If not - a valuable lesson for the kids on survival of the fittest).
Our two fish are still alive, for now, and not in Mitsy's stomach. So - yay us. Now let's just hope they are sufficient as family pets, and don't turn out to have been gateway pets that only encouraged Adi in her dreams of hamsters and cats that are allowed in the house.
(I shouldn't mock Adi's dreams. At least she just wants a hamster. Dani wants a pet lion.)
By "proud," I mean "extremely reluctant."
It began with S's end-of-year party at daycare a couple weeks ago, where for whatever reason, they decided to give each child a going-away present of a real live fish.
WHO DOES THAT???? Who thinks of parents bringing their toddlers home for a month with no daycare, and thinks, "you know what those people probably want? Another fragile, needy living being to care for!"
Maybe you all don't think of goldfish as being particularly needy. OK, maybe to you they aren't. But we're a family that managed to kill cactus. More than one cactus.
Of course, you could always choose to give the fish away or something. If you don't mind breaking your kid's heart.
So we brought our fish home, and Adi instantly fell in love with it and gave it a name that I've already forgotten. Adi has already named each and every one of the several dozen street cats living in this area, and my brain is out of room to remember these things.
She also started petting it. Yes, petting the fish. At least she didn't take it out of the water to hold it, like a friend's child did (more on that later).
In the meantime, N and D are asking questions like, "Can we feed him cereal?... Why not?... Can he go swimming in the bath?" and I'm mentally giving the fish 20% odds of living to see the weekend.
Later that day, we went to E's house, where we learned that their fish (given to E's little sister S, who is in daycare with our S) had returned its soul to its Maker a rather short time after arriving in their home (remember the child who took the fish out of the water to hold it? That was E's little brother).
While I tried to quell my feelings of guilty relief that someone else had managed to kill their fish before we killed ours, Adi was busy realizing that her fish could die, too. So then I told her that, yeah, goldfish sometimes don't live very long.
At first she was teary at the thought of her goldfish not living for long. But within 2 minutes, I overheard her and E debating over what they would do with its dead body - bury it? or feed it to Mitsy?
I had to remind her that her fish could very well still be alive. I think they were almost disappointed.
Anyway, our fish couldn't live in a bowl forever, and E's mom needed replacement fish for her broken-hearted toddler. So we went to the pet store and ended up with one little plastic fish tank each, two fish for her, and one more fish for us (I figured that if I had remembered the breed of fish right, they could be friends. If not - a valuable lesson for the kids on survival of the fittest).
Our two fish are still alive, for now, and not in Mitsy's stomach. So - yay us. Now let's just hope they are sufficient as family pets, and don't turn out to have been gateway pets that only encouraged Adi in her dreams of hamsters and cats that are allowed in the house.
(I shouldn't mock Adi's dreams. At least she just wants a hamster. Dani wants a pet lion.)
Yay...love pets you don't have to walk. Goldfish are better than hamsters in that they don't usually escape like Squirmy used to do...though Rick once had a goldfish that committed harakkiri and was found in his sock drawer.
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