Giving In to Pet Demands

So it seems that my resolve to not acquiesce to the demands of my children is greatly diminished by exhaustion. At a particularly weak moment after being away for nine days, my kids complained that I have for I quote, “200 million years” promised they could get a pet. Last month, Paul had batted around the idea of getting them a rabbit. But after careful consideration, we held to our plan to not get any pets until the twins are out of diapers.

Natalie has been particularly adamant about getting a pet. She has asked for butterflies, worms, camels, llamas, ostriches, horses, turtles, monkeys and most recently cats. One would think that a cat would be the easiest. Unfortunately, since I could die from anaphylactic shock from my extreme allergy to 99% of cats, this is impossible. After feeling like a totally rotten mother, I woke up yesterday wanting more than anything to give my kids something to care for, to see if they had the stamina to step up to a dog.

We settled for Brookstone’s Frog-O-Sphere. The kit comes with two miniature frogs, a snail, live rock, and a bamboo plant all in a conveniently packaged to hopefully keep the kids from killing every thing included. It’s a self-cleaning ecosystem that just requires that the kids remember to feed the frogs twice each week. So far, they are enchanted. Max and Aidan named their frogs Snoopy and Spike while Natalie and Paulina settled for Sally and Sally (since Paulina seems to copy everything that Natalie does). Natalie nearly dozed off on a chair trying to “watch” her baby frogs fall asleep and told me I was the best mommy and she loved me two million three hundred sixty five much. Sometimes giving in to guilt feels pretty good.