Tired...bored and excited...alittle irritated too. I'm not crazy about days/nights like these. I want to jump up and down dancing, drink in the dark and sleep or about 15 minutes and do it all over again. weird.

anyways...we've bought all the paper goods and the chicken and dogs (all beef `cause we have a few folk that need/have to) for a party we're gonna have. still need buns. the bushels of crabs and kegs get ordered the week of. my mom told me something very interesting that I really hadn't thought about...if you make a big pot of MD crab soup (yummmmmm!), and some nice corn on the cob sweetened with milk, people will do less crab pickin'. Not that I don't want folks eating their fill, but it's the truth. And also, the people that like crabs but don't wanna pick on a summer day, can have a nice bowl of soup, etc...you get the picture.

The baby ratties are doing well! so pretty and cute, I give the mommy's a couple of days with their kids, but then I clean out the cage and check on all of them. The kids love holding and loving these little gems. 14 days they will open their eyes. A very important time in their socialization...we have to (oh yeah, twist our arms!) hold and touch and explore with them. The mothers are a little distrustful because they weren't socialized, just kept in their bins. `Course, they were social enough with their male rat pack to get impregnated at the 6 week mark! haha, oh well. they do what they are supposed to do.

Today (as it is after 12a) will be the second litters 7th day, meaning their peachfuzz will be visible, not just touchable, fuzz and their coloring will be clear. we saw that with the first litter on Wednesday. so i will get pictures and show a comparison of new (3 days old for the first litter and 1 day for the second) and maturing pics. We're also going to take a trip to Frederick, MD to a Harlan Teklad warehouse. We are getting 2 15 kilo bags of #8604, lab blocks, a balanced maintenance diet for the ratties. That's good. This stuff has less corn and more soybean in it. And we're getting it for an excellent price! We still will give them "treats", I look at it more as a varied diet. They get Total Raisin Bran, and chicken bones, and romaine lettuce, and ambrosia (they love pineapple, oranges, marshmallows, coconut and sour cream) and whatever else we eat in the house that isn't junk food, `cause that isn't good for them. Each of the mom's have certain food preferences , it's cute.

Shaka-Bear is doing very well. He's healing up...AGAIN. I let him run around without his collar when he wasn't fully healed. I wanted to give him moments without his collar and the vet agreed. He was fine with like 45 minutes, and I was able to stretch out the time he had it off too. I thought it was good. I just didn't think about how itchy healing skin is to an animal that only knows it itches and must stop. He tore himself open. But like i said...it's healing very well again. This time, I won't be fooled. I will NOT take that collar off until he is fully healed and not itchy anymore. After that, we can start him on whatever, more steroids or the Buspar, to completely stop his maiming himself. I hope it works. The next step will have to be declawing his back claws. I REALLY DON'T WANT TO DO THAT. I am very much against permanent physical changes to any person under my care. We made the decision to leave our son the way he came into this world, until HE made his own choice. Same with our daughter (no cutting her hair, either of the kids hair, until they did it themselves {what fun!}; no earrings, no circumcision...)just can't do it. So I really hope that it won't get to that point with Shaka-Bear. I don't know how to talk in cat language to get him to understand he has to stop scratching, that it's all in his mind (hahaha).

Everyone on the home front is doing well. Kids are starting to find interests. Guin ballet (of course, she's been talking about it for-ever), Bren is imitating the moves on that Gap commercial where the boys are doing choreographed Kung Fu...we asked if that interested him, he said yes. Who knows, he'll/we'll find out. I wonder if they have a little mini-class for that at the Rec Council? That would be nice, they had that for ballet, we put Guin in it...she wants to go through the ballet school year. I don't know how martial arts schools are set up. I'll have to start making calls.

I just can't say everything that happens with the kids and our interaction. it's hard to keep up! they do so much everyday and I learn so much about all of us everyday. i should type every moment down. So i don't forget and so that i can remember how hard it was and cherish the hard and wonderful times...but i'm exhausted with the whole play and learn and discipline and feed and play and etc... i love it, but remembering and typing it down? i need a tape recorder to remind myself of what i want to type in this blog!

Bren was looking at the rattie babies and he accidentally jostled one and it squeaked and squealed. he got very upset, almost in tears (he tries to stop himself...it's strange that boys do that naturally). We told him to be very careful and to look, the baby was fine. He felt real bad. Real bad. he didn't want to touch the babies anymore. He went into his room to be alone. Daddy talked to him and told him it was fine. it happens and that the baby wasn't hurt. Bren came out, but when i gave him a kiss at bedtime he told me that i was wrong, that he DID do it on purpose.

now i was there. i know that he didn't jostle that baby on purpose, he was leaning over and it was a total accident. but he felt that guilty.

i told him it looked like an accident to me. and i asked him if he wanted the baby hurt. he shook his head hard. i told him that he definitely didn't do anything to hurt that baby and certainly not on purpose. he smiled and gave me a hug and the next morning...he told me that he was so sorry that he hurt that baby rat.

oh lord, the child is like me! I feel bad for him. i mean it's a good thing because he is extremely empathetic and will try to put himself in anothers shoes before doing something to another, but the turning a thought in his mind over and over...i don't pity him that one bit. it's a good thing, because he wants to improve. but it makes one very hard on oneself. Good luck on that my Bren-agen. I love you...i love you and Guin both.