Crisis number one of the
multi-grandchildren spending a few nights with Nana and DadDad has officially
occurred. I know. Didn’t take long, did it? When it came time for us to pick up Cailyn
from school, I was asleep (not feeling too great). So Chris sat down all the kids in the office
and gave them instructions. “Josiah, you
are to watch Micah with one eye and Jachin with the other. Micah, you are to watch Jachin with one eye
and Josiah with the other. Jachin, you
are to watch Noa with both of your eyes.
And Noa, you watch everybody.
Ultimately, Jachin is in charge.”
There you go. Sounds easy
enough. She won’t be gone all that long,
right? And I’m right in the next
room. So what could possibly go
wrong?
Not long after Chris left I woke up and
staggered into the office. Four kids sat
there quietly. Should have been my first
clue. Jachin was reading, so he had
checked out completely and entered a whole other world. The other three had books as well, but weren’t
quite as engrossed as the elder one. All
seemed well, so I cleared off a chair and joined them. Mere minutes passed before Chris returned
with Cailyn. And the chaos fairly
quickly resumed. Except for Jachin. It took a while for the message to reach the alternate
universe he was now exploring. But in
that milli-second after Cailyn entered the front door and the rest of the cousins
readjusted their throttles to full speed ahead, Chris made her way into the
kitchen. And that’s when I heard the “Oh,
no, little leady. What have you been
doing” comment. At first I assumed she
was speaking to Fred. Would have made
perfect sense. Except Fred was outside
with the other dogs. Nope. This time the culprit was none other than … two-year-old
Noa. Seems she decided to be helpful
during the interval between Chris leaving, Jachin lifting off into inner space,
and me waking up. Best way to do
that? Why feed the fish, of course. How hard could it be? She’s seen it done at least once or twice
before. Just a pinch sprinkled on top of
the water. But they looked so
hungry. And those mouths were in a
constant state of motion, open, shut, open, shut. No way just a pinch was going to be enough. So she did what any concerned animal lover
would do. She dumped in some more
food. Lots more food. All of the food in the carton.
I imagine the fish thought they were
receiving manna from heaven. Especially
that big one. But apparently too much
food is not good for goldfish. Imagine
that. Of course that meant emergency remediation
would be required. We looked it up on
YouTube – you know, home of all the answers.
I watched a video while Chris texted, then talked to Christina on the phone. They both said the same thing, but both
solutions involved letting water sit overnight.
Christina finally gave the go-ahead to forget about the wait and get the
water changed, though. Easier said than
done. That meant a mad dash to WalMart
for distilled water and replacement fish food and one of those little nets to
capture them. That meant dipping for the
fish and putting them in a temporary bowl.
That meant draining their bowl and cleaning the pebbles at the
bottom. That meant wiping out the inside
of the old bowl. That meant returning
the pebbles. That meant filling it up
with distilled water. That meant
reintroducing the fish into their new clean habitat. You know what? That seems like a lot of trouble. It is very hard for me to treat bait so well.
Hebrews 12:3 says, “Consider him who endured such opposition from sinful men, so that you
will not grow weary and lose heart.”
Father, thank you for all those little
critters you created that help our kiddos learn about your world. Amen.
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