Musings of a Mom

Most kids are afraid of the dark and my children are no exception. They like to have a nightlight on and we allow it. My kids have the tendency to wake up in the middle of the night and relocate. They may move to another part of their room and nest on the floor or they may move to another part of the house entirely. Mostly they seem to relocate to one of the couches in our home. Since the kids roam, we have nightlights located in various rooms. By the way, the kids are not sleepwalking although Jill has done that in the past.

As you know, we recently adopted fish. The tank is located on a cabinet countertop in our family room. Behind the tank is an outlet in which a nightlight is plugged. We had every intention of removing this nightlight until we realized that the fish we adopted are afraid of the dark.

At the store we asked if we needed to keep the tank light on and were advised that not only did we not need to keep it on at night but that it might make some of the fish stressed and we should watch out for their comfort. Stressed? Fish swim endlessly with food dropped into their tank. What could they be stressed about? Do they have to worry about sending the kids to college or saving for their retirement? I paid their mortgage — well, my sister paid their mortgage but I paid for the landscaping!

So we watched for signs of stress but the fish swam happily with the light on. But turn the light off and they dash for the back of the tank where the nightlight is. Turn the tank light back on and the fish start to swim throughout the tank footage. Light off, back they dash, and they’re not nice about it either. They push and shove each other to get to the light first.

We started with kids that are afraid of the dark and have moved on to fish with the same problems. How do you explain to a fish that there are no monsters under the bed? Jill thinks a more important problem they have is where to go potty, but that’s another subject entirely.

 Jill had her 8^th birthday.  Time does go by quick.

Jill has been asking for a pet. She wants a cat but my hubby is allergic to them. Hubby wants a dog but the kids don’t seem too excited about dogs. Jack wants a turtle. Someone, we don’t know who, mentioned fish and the kids got excited. Since we didn’t respond right away by going to the pet store, Jill decided to put in a good word with my sister. You know, the one with the crazy dog.

My sister calls one day and says, “Jill wants a pet fish. Can I get her fish and a tank for her birthday?” I told her the decision would be my hubby’s since he would be the one to clean the tank. He acquiesced and off to the store we went. 

The kids were very excited when they found out they were getting fish. Now, I know this was for Jill’s birthday but when you have more than one child the fish become a family thing. So we looked at tanks. We were going to get a 20-gallon tank until the salesperson explained the pros to going with a 30-gallon tank. Since we decided to go with a bigger tank, we told my sister we would cover over the $100 she was originally planning to spend. Of course we had to decorate the tank so Jill found a really cool castle at only $67. Cha-ching. We looked at using sand instead of rock but the cost was going to be about $50 for the amount of sand we needed versus $10 for the rock.  Rock it is! Cha-ching. Oh, yeah, we have to get plants and some shells. Cha-ching. Thank goodness we went with a tank that came with a heater, light, etc. 

We went to pick out fish and found out that you have set up your tank and let it “settle” before you can get fish then you add the fish slowly. Now, we would be coming back for fish the next few weekends. How convenient!

Now, at some point in this scenario I got excited about having fish. Enough so that I considered making the leap from freshwater fish to saltwater. Yes, we’re beginners. My hubby and I had only had goldfish in the past, but hey, saltwater fish are pretty. So we went to another store that had lots of pretty fish. In fact, they had the cast of Finding Nemo! The kids and I went nuts!  “Look!  It’s Nemo!”  “Hey, there’s Dory!”  “Mom!  It’s the guy that cleans Nemo!” 

As we ogled the cast of characters, my husband kept saying, “I think we should stick with the other fish. These guys are harder to care for.” But we ignored the man. We ignored him until I saw the price of Nemo and friends. The cheapest fish was $35 and the prices rose steeply from there. I did some quick calculations in my head and then crushed my children’s desires. “There is NO way I’m paying that much money for FISH!” Yes, they were disappointed but they’ll get over it. Hey, they’re lucky they’re getting the freshwater fish!

So the tank settled and we went back to the store to spend more money. We bought four fish and some food and will go back for more fish in a few days.

Now we have to choose names. I’m thinking we should name them: Cash, Credit, Sucker and I’m Going To Ring My Sister’s Neck.