R.I.P. Dora

Five or six weeks ago, we got a tadpole. I was teaching the preschool lesson about the letter T, and I thought it would be a great to teach them about tadpoles. Bailey was thrilled to have a pet tadpole, and name him Dora. Avery was totally in love with him. Every morning she would ask for, "Fish, fish" and feed him way too much food. The only spontaneous "I love you" out of Avery's mouth went to the tadpole. I try not to be jealous.

This weekend we went to Cleveland for our niece, Hannah's, baptism. When we came back, we discovered Dora on the carpet. He was turning into quite the big jumpy tadpole, and I guess we filled his container up too much. Mike went  to pick him up, and he was still alive! We put him back into his water, where he swam around crazily.

That night, in her prayers, Bailey said the sweetest thing. "Please bless Dora that she won't be died." Sadly, Dora didn't make it. Bailey was, of course, very sad, but didn't want to participate in the Dora's flushing ceremony. (We also had a goldfish who died a few weeks ago. Bailey was very concerned that we flushed him. "How can he be resurrected out of the toilet? He can't be resurrected if he's in the toilet.") That morning, when Avery woke up and asked for, "Fish, fish" I had to tell her that the fish went bye-bye. She threw a small tantrum with lots of "No! No!" and them moved on.

Poor Dora. I feel terrible about it. I guess I'm not very good at keeping animals alive...