family additions and subtractions...

Matthew has wanted a pet, particularly one that "sleeps in a basket" for quite some time...not a realistic option living on the second floor of an apartment building without a blade of grass in sight and nowhere to take a pet for a walk, not to mention where to find a vet if we needed one in a hurry. So a few weeks ago we relented and welcomed into our family a smallish sized fish tank with one gold and one black fantail gold fish. In keeping with the pirate theme of the fish tank the new pets were named Big Bad Bart (the black one) and Dangerous Dan (the gold one) and for all of a week they enjoyed their new home until one morning Dangerous Dan decided to go belly up and abandon ship! I wasn't quite ready for the whole death and dying talk with the kids, so our nanny replaced the absent fish while the kids were at kinder...trouble was Dangerous Dan had doubled in size overnight!!! Matthew asked lots of questions and can now go into great detail about why a fish dies and what happens to it when its had a ceremonious porcelain burial, but Adam kept telling everyone that "fishy got bigger coz he ate all his dinner!" Well over the ensuing weeks we have replaced both Dangerous Dan and Big Bad Bart a total of three times each...so if there is anyone out there that can tell us what we are doing wrong we are 'all ears'.