Fish Post

Garth Le goes to the best little preschool, St. Lukes. It is a religious school, as Garth Le says, it has a church "stuck right to it". I love the teachers and the lessons. The kids have learned a lot of, I will say, interesting songs as well, complete with motions and everything. Over the last couple of days, a particular one has gotten stuck in his head and he has been singing it non-stop. He has been walking everywhere humming the tune and repeating "Singing to the Lord, a new sardine..." over and over. I asked him the other night "Are you sure it is 'a new sardine'"? He looked at me like I was insane and told me "yeah mom, it's a fish". I was like "I know it's a fish, but are you sure those are the words"? He, again, looked at me like I should be in a padded cell and said "yes, I am SURE". The next day after school, after having, no doubt, sung the song, he was running around repeating "Singing to the Lord, the new born king". I stifled a giggle and asked him if those were the actual words to the song, if maybe he forgot, but he quickly let me know that was the second verse. Addendum: I'm still going to leave this story up because I think it is still funny, but I was just informed by a nurse I work with that those really are the words to a church song (the new sardine), so...that is what I get for second guessing a 4 year-old's "Lord as a fish" song. I promise to apologize to him tonight.

In a sort of related story, about 2 years ago, in a momentary lapse of judgement, I bought Garth Le a beta fish at Wal-mart. He named him Roger and we got a bowl and some food and some rocks. Roger lived about a week. At the time Garth Le seemed pretty ok with it, telling everyone that Roger "bit the dust". In a similar lapse of judgement, my mom got a beta fish for Garth Le at Wal-mart to replace Roger and we "let" her keep it at her house, his name is Nemo. Last night we were at my parents' house and as Garth Le fed Nemo, I commented on how great my parents are at keeping fish that have a normal life span of months rather than years alive for a long time. I had a beta in high school that I figured would be a short term commitment that my parents ended up taking care of as I went to college. It lived more than 4 years, which is about 167 in beta years I am pretty sure. Nemo has been going strong for close to 2 years now. I told my mom how great it was that Nemo is doing so well as opposed to Roger with Garth Le out of earshot...or so I thought. He came over and started bawling, put his head in his hands sobbing with only the occasional "Oh Roger" or "I miss you Roger" escaping from his quivering lips. He asked me where Roger went and I told him he went to live with Heavenly Father and Jesus and that they are taking good care of him. He asked me if they were "making him alive again", I told him no that he would want to stay there, then he put his head back in his hands and cried a lot more. While all of this is going on, we are trying really hard not to laugh because Garth Le is being VERY dramatic about this, my dad finally clues into what is going on and he asks me if Roger is the fish we "F-L-U-S-Hed", and I said, "actually, he went in the D-U-M-P-S-T-E-R", Garth Le looked up at me teary-eyed and cried, "Mommy, what did that spell", and as everyone snapped their heads at me in anticipation of how I was going to get out of this, I replied "Heaven".