A Tale of Two Fish

History: For Cameron's first birthday last June we had an Elmo themed party. For party favors, we gave every kid a real "Dorothy", Elmo's pet gold fish (which were WAY cheaper than party favor bags by the way). So Taylor and Cameron of course got their own goldfish that day as well. For $.17 feeder fish these things are amazing! It has been almost a year and we still have them.

Well, we still have Cameron's.

Fast forward to yesterday.

After running a few errands, I stumbled into the house with a cranky little boy demanding "Ju-Ju" (juice in the language of Cameron, a highly sophisticated yet rare and mostly unknown language) and a little girl that REALLY needed to go potty. Nothing out of the ordinary. Cam and I head to the kitchen while Taylor made a dash for the bathroom. A minute later she comes rushing into the kitchen sobbing hysterically. I finally get words out of her. Something about she only had one fish left and now she has none. (Our fish bowls are on the bathroom counter so they can see them) I thought she just couldn't see the fish in it's bowl and thought it died or was gone (that has happened before). I follow my poor little crushed girl into the bathroom to see her little fish on the bathroom counter, out of the bowl, and, well, not living anymore. She was wailing at this point. (P.S. who knew a goldfish could just jump out of it's bowl like that?!)

Not knowing really what was going on but being mom, I just wanted to make it all better. I figured I should get rid of the little thing on the counter ASAP since she is just staring at it, hysterically crying. (In hindsight, not the best thing I have ever done by the way). So I picked it up and tossed it into the potty. Remember, Taylor rushed into the bathroom to go potty and that is when she found her fish. Well, she DID go potty before she found the fish BUT she didn't have a chance to flush yet. In my panic to get rid of the visual loss, I didn't realized that until after I had already dropped it in. I tried to block Taylor from seeing that and just flushed really quick. SHE WENT NUTS! Not only had her fish died, and she was the one to find it, her mommy just put it in the potty with her pee and just flushed it away. I think she may have wanted to hold a memorial service or something a little more respectful.

So, at this point I am just trying to think quick to sooth my poor girls broken heart that I just made worse. So what do I do, I suggest we go to the fish store and get a new one. At first she was just wanting her fish to come back to life but then the thought of getting a new one sounded pretty good.

I loaded my still cranky and now crushed children into the car and headed for the fish store. (Side note, when Taylor cries, Cameron starts to cry. It's his way of showing sympathy I think. So now I have two crying kids)

After checking out all the fish, we got her a new fish.
It isn't exactly the $.17 feeder goldfish she had before.
The softy, guilt ridden mommy may have upgraded her fish a little.
And the bowl.
Which needed a pink castle with pink rhinestones of course.

 Meet Ariel, Taylor's new "Crown Tailed Beta" fish. (She is convinced it is a girl because no boy fish can be that fancy).

I should also mention that Dan was at school all day so he missed all the "fun".
When he got home I mentioned to him that Taylor's fish decided it wanted to see the wide wide world and so it jumped out of it's bowl. He isn't wild about the fish to begin with so he wasn't too sad about it. Then I mentioned that I took her to get a new fish (leaving out the whole upgrading part). He looked at me with the "are you kidding me" face. He figured that since Cameron still had his two fish they could both just be happy with sharing the two remaining fish. I just said, "hey, you weren't there. You didn't see her little heart break at the sight of her deceased fish. I had to do something." Then he went into the bathroom and saw the bowl, the castle and the not a $.17 feeder goldfish. Yes, I got the "are you kidding me" face again.
Although he seems insensitive about it all, here's the thing. Dan is a giant marshmallow inside when it comes to his kids. I guarantee that if he were home when it all went down he would have done the same thing (except the part where I put the dead fish in the unflushed toilet). He may have even got the crown to go with the castle.