Is it funny ha ha or funny oh no?

The other night my family and I were reminiscing about Lance's early childhood.  Trying to explain to Robin how every child make mistakes and learns differently. Robin is smart enough to know that Lance is much different than he is but doesn’t understand why. So we were telling him about Lance.  

One night when lance was about 4 he was just starting waking and was still wearing the SAFO braces. My husband and I were talking and I told him I needed to clean the fish tank. Lance still was only speaking sporadically at that point very few words and most of them only intelligible by me.  I was teaching Lance ASL so he would be able to communicate because of more than a few reasons and made the sign for fish and for cleaning so Lance would understand the conversation.  Ok so off we went to bed and sleep Lance was sleeping in a toddler bed and he woke up early. I was asleep because at the time Lance only slept for, at the most 4 hours, and every so often I would get so tired that I wouldn’t wake up before he did or worse I would sleep through him making the first noises of the day.

Then suddenly I get this 4 year old body flopping onto my chest and tapping my head.

“Momma, Momma, Momma  up, up, up...”

“Lance what’s wrong baby?” Come in bed and snuggle with mommy, I’ll put Olie on. You can watch Olie.  ( Praying that I could get 30 minutes more sleep.)

Momma, Momma, see, see, fis, fis!

See the fish??  

“I know baby the Fish are in the kitchen. We will feed them later, not now.” 

No no.   See fis, fis ( makes the sign for clean).  He is very excited.

Now I am all squinty eyed and blind as a bat minus my glasses, but kind of awake. “I know I have to clean the fish tank but they are ok Lance, they will be fine till I clean them.”

“NO Momma See Fis, Momma ( makes the sign for clean again)” He slips off the bed and runs to the kitchen, and comes back with two hands full of soap bubbles. Now my mommy instincts are on full alert. 

Lance where did you get those bubbles??

Lance is smiling and as he flings the bubbles all around very happy. He makes the sign for Lance an L pressed up against his Heart and the sign for clean and calling me as he runs back to the kitchen.

I jump out of the bed and run to the kitchen .

I CANT SEE MY FISHTANK!!!

ALL I SEE IS BUBBLES!! Tons and tone of bubbles!

I look down and on the floor, in front of the counter are an empty bottle of dish soap a step stool and a sea of bubbles!

In a panicked and exasperated tone “Lance What Did you DO?!”

Lance is so happy and all smiles, he sighs and continues to smile. “Momma Fis the sign for  clean” and then he claps his hands so happy so proud.  He helped Momma.

My eyes are tearing and all that I can think of is my poor fish. I start scooping out bubbles and Piling them into the sink. I had five large angel fish and two somewhat large gold fish and a black and white Pleko.   As I am scooping out bubbles my hand brushed what I assumed was a dead fish. I scoop out the poor fish. It’s one of my 5 year old goldfish. When we got it,  it was only about one inch long now it was five inches and nice and plump. I love my fish.

Then the damn thing nearly scared me to death!

 It started flipping and flopping around in my hand it was still alive! I quickly put him in a pot of water and continued to search for the other fish .. Perhaps all the stuff  I read about fish and soap was wrong? Maybe I had super fish that could survive soap. Then I grabbed my angels one after the other .. All very, very dead..

Finally I pulled my last goldfish and the pleko out they were alive! Amazing! They survived the pits of hell and my little soap daemon!

It took two days of rinsing and a full change of gravel and equipment but my three little hero’s survived the super cleaning skills of a over enthusiastic 4 year old.

So how do you explain to a 4 year old that fish don’t use soap to get clean? You don’t, you make sure soap like everything else that may cause a hazard gets locked up and you tell him only Mommy can give the fishes a bath!

So Lances lesson was No washing the fish for mommy and Robins lesson was 1 Fish can die 2) brother doesn’t think of the consequences of his actions and 3) no matter what mommy says she still won’t kill you because brother is still here ! LOL

Till the next installment of,

 Is it funny ha ha or funny oh no?

Because I have more fish tails and pet stories to retell.

Love ya,

Later!