Growing and Changing

A lot has gone on in the last week.  On Tuesday when I went to pick up Mia from kindergarten they were passing out goldfish to all the children whose parents said it was okay.  Well as you can imagine after that first parent said yes, it's not as if the rest of us had any choice but to say yes as well.  So, we bring this little fish home and Mia names her Goldie.  Then Naomi suggests she give it a regular human name because that is what she always does with her animals, so the name changes to Christy.  We put the little thing in a cleaned out flower vase and The Brills give us some extra fish food they had laying around.  Wednesday comes and goes and Mia is loving having this new little pet.  Thursday she waves goodbye to Christy and says she'll see her after school.  As I'm cleaning up the house in preparation for our playdate with Miranda after school I walk into the kitchen and notice that Christy is laying flat on the bottom of the vase.  Could she just be sleeping?  Wishful thinking.  She was dead.  Super dead.  I panic.  Great, after the way Mia reacted to those stinkin sea monkeys she was really going to take this hard.  I call Shelby to see if he has any bright ideas and we decide we'll just have to let her get a new fish to make up for it.  Lennon was sleeping late so I had Suzanne pick Mia up and bring her home.  When she arrives home Miranda had also just pulled up.  Mia goes running over to Miranda..."I got a fish.  I got a fish.  I have to show you my new fish.  Her name is Christy!"  I had to stop her.  "Mia, I'm sorry honey.  I have some bad news.  The goldfish died."  Hysterics.  Mia suddenly goes running into the house crying "No!  No! No!"  It was like a scene from a movie.  We decide to bury poor Christy in the backyard.  I send Mia and Miranda outside with spoons to dig a little hole.  Then Mia said a nice little prayer.  "Dear God, I really loved Christy.  Please take good care of her in Heaven.  Amen"  Then I gave both girls some candy to get their minds off of the sad dead fish situation.  Even Amy, Miranda's mom, was getting teary eyed over Mia's genuine despair.  So, I promised Mia we would go out saturday as a family and pick out a brand new fish.  She seems okay about that, but still very sad about Christy.

Friday.  Lennon and I go to the zoo with a bunch of our friends.  He loves seeing the other kids running around and reaching up into the trees.  At my friends urging I also let him crawl around the playground.  He got pretty dirty, but I figure he's a boy and I was definitely a little uptight with Mia, so what the heck.  I don't think he really noticed the animals that much which was the opposite of Mia.  At that age she lived for the zoo.  She loved just staring into the exhibits at the different animals at the Denver zoo.  Shelby's office closed early so he comes home and we all have a relaxing evening together.  

Saturday as promised we went out to PetCo and chose a new fish.  I talked with an employee who informed me that Betta fish are far easier to care for than goldfish, so we stuck with them.  They are much cooler looking anyway.  After much deliberation Mia chose this nice dark blue male Betta.  He really is a pretty fish.  She didn't want to have to give him a boy name though, so she named him Chelsea.  We got a great little fishbowl from The Christmastree shops and then we had to get a net, some food and some water conditioner from the pet store.  

Fish bowl with cat hanging over the edge   $10

Brand new Betta blue betta fish                    $15

Net, food and water conditioner                   $10  

Helping your sweet little five year old get over her dead goldfish....PRICELESS!

Once we got home and had some lunch Shelby and Mia went out to Breakheart and hiked some of the trails and brought some squirrel food in hopes of getting up close and personal with some woodland creatures.  They ended up having no such luck, but they still had a great time.

On another note, after we had finished getting Chelsea all set up in her new home we started thinking about what to do about the nasty kitty situation.  Angel has just been getting worse and worse and making the house smell more and more like ammonia and feces.  My friend Amy had suggested we make Angel and outdoor cat, but I am afraid of fleas so I just put that thought to the side.  This day however I decided to see what Mia and Shelby thought of the idea.  They both went for it right away.  In less than five minutes they were saying their goodbyes and readying him for life outdoors.  I couldn't believe it.  It was too easy.  We took some family pictures and let him out the front door.  After about half an hour outside with him we finally came in the have dinner.  It seemed he was just going to hang around outside the house.  Mia shed some tears just before we let him out of the house and then again each time he went behind something and she couldn't see him momentarily, but overall it went over very smoothly.  Later that night he started pawing at the back door and we felt bad, so we let him in downstairs and decided that he could come in at night and most likely if he was outside all day he wouldn't pee and poop all over the floor downstairs.  So far we have been right.  Shelby spent most of the day sunday ripping up the carpet downstairs and cleaning the concrete.  Hopefully we are going to get a carpet remnant from somewhere for cheap, cause the concrete is pretty ugly.  Still, ugly is soo much better than that smell!  

In other news....Lennon is officially, totally, no doubts about it WALKING!  He's been taking two or three steps at a time now for about two weeks, but finally yesterday he got up the courage to just do it.  He now has walked the length of the living room several times and he is getting a pretty big kick out of himself.  He still falls a lot and gets around a lot faster crawling, but it's coming along.  Here's a video clip:

Today it's Memorial Day and we are getting ready to go to a Mem Day Party at The McCoy house.  All our friends will be there and it should be  blast.  Lennon loves being outside, so that part should be easy.  Mia had been told that they would celebrate Memorial Day at school on Friday so she made a "patriotic egg."  Don't ask me why it was an egg, but it was.  It was cute and looked like the American Flag and she wrote the pledge on it too.  She brought it to school in hopes that the teacher would hang it up while they celebrated, but she was sent home with it in her backpack.  I asked her if her teacher liked it, but she told me her teacher couldn't hang it up and told her it was because "in America you can go to jail for making fun of the American flag."  Is she crazy??  Why did we get stuck with this communist teacher??  I cannot believe she has so little understanding of the US government.  Shelby and I are pretty frustrated with her and really hoping that next year Mia has better luck in the teacher department.  Oh well.  On to the party!