Whining Animals

I overheard my two kids comparing their lollipops to see which lollipop was bigger.

"Mine's big.", said Jared.

"Mine's bigger." said Alex.

Jared pondered for a second and then responded, "Mine's bigger-er."

My wife was in one of her moods since it was one of those periodic times she gets easily irritated. I was doing things around the house and forgot about my haircut appointment. She was livid. You'd have thought I'd done something *really* bad the way she was yelling at me.

As I walked past Jared to get a screwdriver, Jared looked at me and asked, "Daddy, you been bad?"

Jared has always had a fascination with manakins. Wandering through any clothing store with him will have him spouting out "there's a manakin" and "there's another manakin". I don't know what the fascination is with them, but he finds them amusing.

Today when he got home from a shopping trip with his mom, he proudly announced "I pooped at the manakin's house."

When Alex was 4, we had 3 foot by 5 foot pond that stocked with goldfish. The first winter, the pond froze solid and killed all the fish. Spring came and we had to restock the fish because my wife thought that Alex would be heartbroken to see the floating corpses of the goldfish.

The next winter was also cold, but I would break the ice each morning so that the fish would be able to breathe - or escape. One morning, the pick couldn't break through to the water. "Oh well" was my first reaction, fish are on their own because they must survive somehow in the wild.

My wife had other ideas. She wanted to save the fish to make sure that they made it through the winter. She got the $5 fish tank and filled it with water and I proceeded to dig deeper into the ice searching for the water. It was 15 degrees that Sunday and I was spending it digging a hole in the ice instead of sitting by the wood stove.

Finally, we hit water about a foot down in the ice and we saw some fish swimming around. We made the hole bigger and started catching the fish. One by one we started filling the
fish tank with the goldfish and brought the tank indoors. We had about ten large (2-5 inch) goldfish crowded into a moderate sized tank. Of course, we had no food or anything else so we went to the store to get some supplies.

We came back with those little rocks for the bottom of the tank, fish food, bubbler, and fake scenery. They also saw some cute little fish at the store and got a few. We put everything together and introduced the new fish to their new home and everything was good for a while. Just picture these tiny (less than one inch long fish) up against these much larger and wild goldfish.

But all was not well as the little fish started disappearing. I nicknamed them "appetizers" because each time Alex came to find his little fish, there was another fish missing until they were all gone. That was very expensive fish food.

But that is not the end of the story. Spring came and it was time to release the fish into the pond as it had finally thawed. But wouldn't you know, we missed some fish in the pond and they made it through without intervention. I'm sure they were glad to see their bretheren.

Jared seems to associate coming home with going to bed because when he realizes we're heading home in the car, he'll blurt out "It's not bedtime" or "It's not nap time" and wait for a response from someone.

He also has a little plastic car that he can sit in. Everytime he gets in, he tells us he's going to the store. Do we go to the store that often?

Alex has started playing with the Lego NXT robot kit. He wants to go up and show Mom after every single step instead of waiting for a significant change. He seems to enjoy having a toy he can make interact with the environment.