Seriously cool

We've been promising Liza that when she finishes seven accident-free days, she gets a fish. I expected that her training would take a lot longer than it has so far, and had projected that she'd meet her goal sometime after Thanksgiving ... but the day we left for the Shore she had six of the seven days under her belt, so we had to sort of scramble to figure out how we were going to handle it if she got her seventh day while we were 10 hours from home.

She made it, and while she's not exactly been harping on the fact that we promised her a fish, on principle I don't like to disappoint her if I can help it. But fish don't travel well, so I was about to the point where I was going to have to tell her she'd have to wait until we got home. Then we went shopping at Tuesday Morning, and I found the perfect answer.

It's a small aquarium that has five tiny magnetic fish, and a moving magnet built into the base. When we turn it on, the fish dart around in a relatively realistic way, especially considering that the sucker only cost me $8. It even comes with a small magnetic wand we can use to lure the fish over to the side to "play" with us.

Liza loves this thing almost as much as I do. She loves turning the light on and off, loves playing with the wand, loves attempting to scoop the fish out with her hands (which is a good reason we didn't get her a real fish). And when she gets too rowdy with it, we can tell her it's time for the fish to take a nap and shut it off. Brilliant!