Thing 2's Birthday Presents

I should blog about this before I forget it:

Thing 2 was born, as careful readers of this blog will already have noted, two days after Christmas. So he's doomed to be one of those unfortunate kids whose birthday fades into the general Christmas rush, and who faintly believes that he's not getting His Fair Share Of The Loot. (And that definitely did happen this year; Thing 1 had both more presents and better, more expensive stuff -- including a Nintendo DS, since that was what he's been saying for the past four months was the one things he definitely, positively wanted -- than his little brother. Luckily, Thing 2 is still in awe of his brother, and shares everything, so it wasn't a big deal. It probably will be next year, though, if we're not more careful.)

However, Thing 2 is more of a people person; he's just friendlier with other kids, better at playing with others, and just has a sunnier, happier disposition. So he'll probably have aspects of his life that Thing 1 will envy (and that's actually good, since you don't want the balance of power among the kids to be all one way). His birthday party (which was at the nexus of all five-year-old-ness, Chuck E. Cheese's) was very well attended (possibly also because it was a lousy day on Thursday), and so Thing 2 had a lot of his friends (and his brother) around him for his party, and got a lot of presents then.

That was a sidebar, actually: what I wanted to mention was that we got Thing 2 an aquarium for his birthday (to be something new and special that's very different from his brother -- we do have two hamsters that the two of them basically share as pets, and I forget exactly when or how we got them). He also got two fish on his birthday; The Wife went out with Thing 1 to pick them out just before dinner on Tuesday. The Wife was out shopping again today, and got him a third fish.

The first two fish are named Nicky and Bicky (along the lines of the hamsters, named Harriman and Carriman). But the third one was named by Thing 1, and, since he's obsessed by video games, we now have a fish named Mario, Jr.