We Have SEVEN New Family Members at our House!

Shortly after Benjamin (our third child) was born, I wrote a post entitled Four? Four!! It was a post about Henry's fourth birthday. The boys' birthdays are only about seven weeks apart. When I shared the post on Facebook, someone mistakenly thought I was announcing my 4th pregnancy. Then I had a lot of fires to put out!! 

B.F. (Before Fish)

With this post title, I hope that I have not mistakenly led anyone to believe that I am pregnant...with septuplets. Because...NO! Thank you, but no. I do not plan on having septuplets. And as far as I know, septuplets take some planning. I don't think they even occur naturally.  Right?! Great! Now I'm paranoid!!

I'm really just wanting to share our new fish with you. That's right...FISH! Seven of them. The kids got a tank for Christmas and we set it up shortly thereafter. I've Googled aquarium care and one of the things I learned was that you can stress out your tank if you add too many things at one time. With that in mind, we've added fish two at a time until we got to our tank max of seven. The last three were added on Saturday and now our fish tank home is complete.

The first two fish were chosen by Frances. She won that right in a Solomon's Choice-type decision. I asked each kid to tell me who should choose first and why. The boys each picked themselves, but Frances picked Benjamin (for a somewhat legitimate reason), so I told her she got to pick first for being unselfish. The boys only cried for a minute and then the fun of picking out fish calmed them down.

Frances chose two Mickey Mouse platys. It's not obvious to everyone at first glance, but these fish have a distinct Mickey Mouse head shape on their tails. They are mostly orange fish, aside from that marking. She named her fish BillyBobJoe and Fred. (Don't ask me why...) BillyBobJoe is slightly bigger and has a lighter belly than Fred.

The next week, it was Henry's turn. He chose to red eyed tetras. They got this name from the red rings around their eyes.  Henry named his fish Chuck and Joey. I was worried about Chuck the first night because he wasn't swimming very much. I was prepared to have "the talk" with Henry, but then the fish seemed to recover and dart around the tank. Since then, I've noticed that must be his normal behavior. Chuck looks like he's been in a few fights as his lip was cut and his tail has a split in it.

The past Saturday Benjamin finally got his turn to pick fish. He actually told me he didn't want Frances and Henry to come with him, so we set off on a fish finding date together. He had a good time looking at all the choices and since we were alone I had the ability to tell him about each kind.

I steered him towards some pretty blue fish so we could add some color to the tank. They turned out to be fancy guppies. Not just plain guppies, guys. FANCY guppies! And if you're wondering...Yes, we did sing (just the refrain of) "Fancy" to them (until Ken told us to stop!) Benjamin named his fish Poofy and Puffy.  Poofy has a pink spot on his tail so we can tell them apart.

And the seventh fish? He's mine! I picked out a Chinese algae eater (not such a fancy name, huh?). He's tiny, and he won't likely grow much bigger. His name is Harold. I don't really know why, but it seemed to fit in with all the other wacky names.

Now we have a full tank in our full house. The kids love watching the fish swim around and have gotten into a good pattern to take turns feeding them. I'll admit to going in there on occasion just to watch them swim around and to try and find all of them.  And I shouldn't mention it, but I've found Ken in there a few times, reading a book and just checking on them.

A.F. (After Fish) The kids like to give them different toys to look at.

Do you have pets? How did you come up with their names?