Great Scott! It’s that time of the year again. When we all put on our ‘responsible adult’ hats and try to down young children forced to follow us in lakes of fire or shove teenagers through the Caverns of Time. That didn’t come off sounding nearly as un-creepy as I wanted. Anyway, Children’s Week – that event that brings joy to pet collectors and hair ripping fright and tedium to achievement collectors – has returned! But I am sorry achievement folk, this post is not for you. Go talk to Cynwise.
This post is for the pet collectors out there. Every year Children’s Week offers up a variety of little pets of which you can only choose 1 per orphan. How unfair! Way more unfair than having your parents die in a war so you only get one week a year to be out of a cramped little hovel in Orgrimmar or Stormwind. But ah HA! There’s a trick now you see, because unlike those poor orphans, we know the future!
One of the big features to the next expansion, Mists of Pandaria, will be the introduction of pet battles. Regardless of how you feel about them, they also bring the pet collector with alt-itits’ dream: Account wide pets! Oh yes, think of your entire collection across all characters being merged into one giant library. No more paying huge prices for both Alliance and Horde pets from the Argent Tournament, only having to get the whelps once and only once, and more relevantly only having to do Children’s Week ONE year instead of FOUR to get all the pets. Provided you’ve got at least 4 characters at or over level 70, and 2 at 80 or higher.
All you’ll need to do is run each alt through the Children’s Week quests and pick a different pet. Then when the great pet collection merge of 2012 occurs, you’ll have all your Children’s Week pets together in one big happy family.
THAT, dear Marty’s of the world, is heavy.
Vrykerion 
A truely evil plan worthy of you Vry! I’ll have to see who has what and get busy dragging orphans around.
In terms of whats what, there are 3 orphans you get to drag around. One in Azeroth, one in Outland and one in Northrend.
At the end of the Outland and Azeroth quest chains, you get to pick one of four pets:
Azeroth: Mr. Wiggles the Pig, Whiskers the Rat, Speedy the Turtle or Scooter the Snail.
Outland: Egbert the Hawkstrider, Peanut the Elekk, Willy the Beholder, or Legs the Marshwalker.
In Northrend, it’s a bit different. You have to choose at the beginning which pet you’ll get by choosing to either escort a Wolvar Pup or Oracle Hatchling. Depending on which orphan you help out, you’ll get a pet of a wolvar or gorlock.