(I sent a note to school to alert his teacher and aide about Nixon's fish almost dying. It turns out, knowing what to say because of what was going on at home, helped Nixon turn things around. During an assembly, Nixon nearly fell asleep on his aide's shoulder while they sat in the far back of the room because Nixon had said the noise was hurting him).
Friday, after an amazing day at school, Nixon came home to find his fish still struggling to live. By bedtime his struggle had ended and Nixon's had just begun.
After a short funeral, which began with Nixon holding Scootaloo's vase and carrying it to the bathroom, Nixon and I sat in his bed and cried together. My heart broke listening to his gut-wrenching cries.
He did love that fish an saying goodbye was much more hard than he had expected. He wasn't as prepared as he thought he was. It still hurt.
Saturday he had a birthday party to attend. With only a short meltdown Nixon made it through the party in amazingly good fashion. There were no tears for Scootaloo.
Today we spent the morning together, as a family. Last night, Mac found Nixon's old Halloween costume Iron Man. This morning Nixon asked to wear it to breakfast. He rarely has any opinion on the clothes he wears but when he does, I allow it as long as it's seasonally appropriate. (No shorts in the winter is pretty much the limit of my refusals.) We went to breakfast and Nixon got smiles and I saw silent nods from other parents. Everyone who spoke to Nixon tried to call him "Iron Man" but Nixon was quick to tell them "It's only a costume, my name is Nixon".
I adore my child and I was extremely grateful, many times beyond words, to every person who was kind to the little boy dressed as Iron Man the week before Valentine's Day today.
We came home with 3 new mollies (named Scootaloo, AppleBloom and SweetieBelle for the Cutie Mark Crusaders from My Little Pony) and one small African Dwarf Frog named SeaFrog (or Lil A-hole as I dubbed him tonight after scaring us that he'd gotten caught behind the filter)
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