Poidy Paggs

This Christmas Ellis' Uncle gave Mac a fish tank. Ellis took Mac to WalMart to pick a fish for it, and they came home with two big goldfish. Guess how long it took for us to find the first one belly-up? About a day.

I had my concerns about the goldfish. They are smelly, make the tank way too dirty, and they were pretty big for the size tank we had. Well, when the first fish died, I thought maybe Mac wouldn't notice. One day he said, "mom, where's the other fish?" Ahhh, hmmm. Well, he's not there. "Oh, ok!" Phew! That was easy.

Mac decided to name the remaining fish "Pax," (don't ask me where that came from) and even though I didn't want Mac's fish to die, I also did not like having a brown smelly tank in our living room 2 days after I cleaned it! So, yeah, I guess I did want that fish to die.

Well, a few days ago, Pax died. The tank was so dirty I thought maybe Mac wouldn't even notice that there wasn't a fish in it, but yesterday he asked, "Mommy! Where's my fish?!!!!"

"Oh, well...I flushed him down the toilet. It was time for him to go back to the ocean!"

Mac seemed to think that was a pretty good deal for Pax. Besides, I told him that we would go and get a new fish. He said, super excitedly (and jumping up and down):

"Can we build a submarine and go underwater and get baby sharks?!!" I said, "Wow! That would be so fun! But, we are just going to go to WalMart instead."

Well, this morning Mac was asking again about his missing fish, so we decided to make the trek to WalMart. First, I needed to feed Davey. Here he was, passed out on the bed after his 2nd breakfast:

He was happy enough when I got him into his carseat though:

We got to the fish tank section and I noticed that there was not a single tank on display that did not have at least 2 or 3 dead fish floating in it. Mac and Corrie were both so excited to look at the fish. Corrie kept saying, "I need a squid, Mommy!" Sorry Corrie, but there are no squids for sale here today :(

I explained that she already has a fish (Dory), and that we were going to get a new one for Mac's tank. I decided to have Mac pick another Betta. They are cheap, live through almost anything, and it takes them a long time to make the water dirty (compared to a big gold fish).

I also let Mac pick out a new tank decoration: a sunken pirate ship! I wish you could have seen in person how excited he was about it, but this picture gives you a pretty good idea:

The first thing he did was show Davey:

We got home and got the fish tank ready - pirate ship and all. I kept asking Mac what his new fish's name was, and for a while he would say, "I don't know my fish's name, Mommy." And then, one time he said, matter-of-factly, "it's name is Poidy Paggs." Huh? Poi-dee Paggs? "Yes! It's name is Poidy Paggs." Okay, Mac! (We've just been calling it "Poidy" for short).

It's naptime now, but Mac is so excited to get up and look at his new fish and pirate ship some more. What a fun morning God has blessed us with.