Mommy Push-Over and the Fish

Rachel is a complete push-over. We were in the pet store getting litter for Tybalt, and Jackson saw the fish. The kid's first word was fish (Don't ask me why. He has two Mamas and no fish). When he saw all the fish tanks, he went nuts, clapping and squealing and saying "fish, fish fish."

The little goldfish were on sale for 50 cents and they had little tanks for $4. I thought that was reasonable. Then the salesgirl suggested a pretty blue Betta for $2. Fine, I added a second fish and then some blue rocks in the bottom for $3. I thought I'd done good. Everything we needed for less than $10. Plus Jackson loved the fish, and Rach felt like the best mom ever.

Then we got to the counter and the clerk said we needed salt and food and de-chlorinator. She also suggested a filter, but by now we'd passed 20 bucks, and Jackson was shaking the bag of fish, so we drew the line.

We got them home and set them up on his night stand. Rach turned around to pick up the rocks (which Jackson had dumped everywhere). When she turned back, Jackson was running out the door with the fish tank in hand, and water sloshing everywhere.

She got it put out of his reach and Jackson was so happy to watch them swim around. We named the blue one Jonah and the goldfish Moby. We started to think it wasn't a bad idea after all. Then that night after he went down for bed, he started screaming his head off. He's always been a good sleeper, so we freaked out, ran in and scooped him up looking for what had hurt him when all of a sudden we realized he's crying "fish, fish,fish" and trying to get into the fish bowl. So now every night before bed we have make a big production of saying goodnight to the fish and hiding the bowl behind a towel so they don't keep him up all night.

As it turns out, the fish have been alive for over two weeks now, which is much more than we expected, so we went back to the pet store and got them an upgrade in their living space. They now have a bigger tank, a plant to swim around and a filter. Setting us back another $35.

Oy! No more impulse buys for mommy pushover.