Latest Additions to the Family

Our new babies:


One of Chickadee's classmates brought her guinea pigs and their 5 babies to class on Tuesday. When I picked Chickadee up after school she was so excited, she was practically vibrating and she spent the entire trip home trying to convince me how desperately we needed a guinea pig.

I love guineas, myself, having lived with 3* of them when I was the same age. They're good pets for young kids - very friendly, talkative, basically lazy little critters who sit around eating all day. Even MonkeyBoy can hold one in his lap. But Dean has long held the opinion that we already have too many pets (the aging wingnut dog and our gerbils, the Java Triplets), so it took a little convincing to get him to agree to one more (very little, really - he puts up a good front, but I think we all see through it).

Chickadee was over the moon all week, fretting about what to call her new pet, what to feed it, how often she'd be expected to change the cage ... and complaining that she had to wait 'til Sunday to pick it up. When the Big Day finally arrived, she had finally made up her mind which one she wanted, had a name all picked out (Neo, a combination of Cleo and Nemo because she couldn't choose between them), but was suffering a few minor pangs of remorse because there were actually 2 she thought were cutest. She went for the fuzziest one of the litter:


Then, of course, as soon as MonkeyBoy spotted the other babies (having had exactly zero interest in the entire proceedings until that point) he wanted one too. Knowing that they're herd animals (and basically being a sucker for cute animals of any sort) it took me about 3 seconds to agree. Serendipitously, the one MonkeyBoy wanted turned out to be Chickadee's second choice. He named her Carmen, because he's hugely enamoured of Spy Kids at the moment. Now he's calling her Egbee, and I'm sure she'll have another name by dinnertime tonight. The rest of us are sticking with Carmen:


I got the evil eye from Dean for a few hours after we got home, but he's almost as big a softy as I am (he just hides it better) and has actually admitted they're kind of cute. And I have promised that This Is It, that there will be No More Pets. I can live with that.

For a while, anyhow ;-)


*Over the course of my childhood, we went through 3 dogs, 2 cats, 5 guinea pigs, 5 mice, 7 gerbils, 4 hamsters, 3 rabbits, a frog raised from a tadpole, 4 toads, 3 newts, a mudpuppy, 3 hermit crabs, 2 crayfish, and a budgie. We always had at least as many pets as people, so I'm just keeping the tradition alive.