I'm going to be a Grandma...

Did that get your attention?

About eight years ago Kirby and I bought four tiny little fish home to put in our pond – we named them Katherine (grey fish), Humphrey (multi coloured), Ginger (orange and white) and Fred (pure orange). They were gorgeous, friendly and actually came when they were called – I’m not sure what the neighbours thought hearing me say “fish, fish” in a high pitched voice!

A year later my parents-in-law moved house and brought down a gorgeous black fish to join our fish and he settled in nicely. We named him Laurence. Yes there was a theme back then – Katherine Hepburn, Humphrey Bogart, Ginger Rogers, Fred Astaire, and now Laurence Olivier.

I was feeding the fish, just over a year after Laurence came to live with us, and I thought I saw some tiny little creatures flitting from one pond plant to another. At first I thought they were mosquito larvae, but I watched them closely and realised they were baby fish! This was the first generation of babies.

We now had a gorgeous grey fellow who we named Dylan and a pretty orange fish we called Ursula. This time we had the theme of writers and poets to name the fish – Dylan Thomas and Ursula Le Guin.

In the following years we have had four more generations of babies. Sadly some of them didn’t make it past the first year or two and the first five fish we had have also passed away.

When we moved house I was not going to leave my fish behind. We took a new pond to my parents’ house and set it up and then took the fish down there. When we were all settled in our new house we brought the pond and the fish home and they are very happy here.

While we were getting the fish out of the pond at my Mum and Dad’s we discovered two more babies that we didn’t know were there.

So, now in our pond we have Dylan, Ursula, Sydney, George, Flynn, Harriett, Holly, Maisie, Scarlett, Harry, Milly, Mika and Charlie (there’s no logical theme to naming them anymore...except Holly is named after Holly Shiftwell from Cars 2). They are all as friendly as the fish before them were – I guess they learnt that I was okay and was the bearer of food from the generations before them.

A few weeks back I was sitting by the pond watching the fish and I noticed that George was looking particularly chubby, as were some of the others. They were carrying eggs!

The other day their chubbiness had diminished and all the fish were chasing each other around the pond…safe to say I can expect more babies in the next few weeks…yay! They will be born in about 7-10 days, but I won’t be able to see them for some time after that because they are so small.

I’m really excited and I am already thinking about names, and wondering who they will look like – for example, Dylan has to be Katherine’s descendant, and there is a distinct look of Humphrey in Holly.

Hmm…now that I think about it…I’m not going to be a Grandma…I’m going to be a Great-Great-Great-Great-Great Grandma! I feel old now…

I’ll let you know when the babies appear!