Things I Let the Kids Talk Me In To

So for awhile now Katelyn and her friend Kylie have been telling me that they want to go in on a hamster. And for anyone that knows me pretty well, knows that I am deathly afraid of rodents. Any rodents! Yes, even hamsters. Which is very odd seeing as how I had a hamster when I was Katelyn's age, I can't explain it. Anyway, I thought this hamster thing would go away and they would forget about it and move on. Well, it didn't, and they approached me on Friday and said they called Petco and found out that between the hamster, a cage, food, and everything else it was going to run them about $50. I then realized this hamster thing was not going away and they were dead serious. After much begging and pleading, I agreed and said only if it stays at Kylie's house. That satisfied them and they were very excited. They had most of the money saved already but were a little short, so they had a lemonade stand and made $13.00. (Not bad.) Between a few chores around the house and some promised future babysitting they had their $50. So I took them to the Petco that night and let me tell you, this was a real labor of love. Just looking at all the bags of hamster food with all the pictures of all the little rodents on the packages made me almost have an anxiety attack. The girls then went and picked out their hamster, which I advised them to do very quickly, and they soon were carrying it around in a little box. Ugh!! We went to pay for it all at the register which was quite an ordeal seeing as how over $20 was in coins! I really felt bad for the people behind us. The ride home was painful as I could hear the hamster scratching at the box the entire ride home. We made it home and set up the cage with all of it's food and water and the girls could not be more excited. They named him Mobey. It was almost time to take him to Kylie's house--his new home, when I was starting to feel a little bad for Katelyn. Katelyn had earned half the money and was willing to take care of it and yet it was going to stay at Kylie's all the time. She hadn't once complained about the living arrangements, I think she was just grateful I had agreed to any of this. I talked with Josh and we told Katelyn that she could keep the hamster at our house half of the time. She was so thrilled! I know...I'm crazy! So it looks like we'll be having a hamster at our house every other week. I don't know how this back and forth stuff is going to work and I really don't know how I'm going to handle this, but we'll see how it goes.