Thursdays.

Every Thursday I babysit adorable twin boys. I head down to their house right after I take Peter to work and spend all morning and afternoon with them. I take them to their gymnastics class, then we come home and do phonics, catechism, workbooks and read. After which we have lunch and play for the rest of the afternoon. It really is a fun day.
Well last week they asked if I would take them to the pet store after gym class. I love animals. Sure, why not. After all, we had all afternoon and we could afford to kill some time and energy and not have any messes to clean up!
After walking up and back down every aisle, we finally found the (small) section of animals they had for sale. One boy went right to the cage of bunnies. "I want a rabbit. Miss Angela, can you please get me a rabbit? I choose that one. I want to name him Polka-Dot. Pookie, for short. Where are the cages? Let's get him out." The other headed straight to the reptiles. "Wow, look at that snake! Are there any tarantulas? I see lizards. I love tarantulas." I whisked him away from the creatures and tried to refocus them both on something more appealing and realistic. "How about a fish? Let's see if there's one that looks like Nemo! I used to have one that looked like this guy here." No avail. They wanted a bunny and something, anything, with more than 4 legs and a tail.
After quite some time we wrapped things up in there. I had to answer quite a few questions. Why do the lizards like their crickets to be jumping? Does the man at the counter put the bunnies in bags? Why are they called feeder fish? The whole way home we discussed how we needed to talk it over with their parents before we brought home animals, what the pets would be named, and when we could go back and get them.
As soon as their mom got home they ran to her begging for "pets". She was concerned that a goldfish might die, or that they would kill a rabbit, so in hopes of pleasing both parties, I suggested a beta fish. I've heard they live forever and require little or no maintenance.
The next week I went, there on the counter, sat two bowls with beta fish dubbed Pookie and Dono. I was sure to apologize to the boys' parents before I left and promised the dad we'd stay out of pet stores.