I got a call from my brother on Tuesday afternoon.  He said he was leaving the UPS place and that a package of live animals would arrive at our house by 10:30 the next morning (It didn’t arrive  until nearly 3:00 in the afternoon, though).  I tried and tried to figure out how on earth I was going to keep the package’s arrival a secret, where I would secretly hide the tiny new arrival, but try as we could, Barry and I both couldn’t think of a plausible way to completely hide Brenna’s new pet until Christmas.

So, we opted out of the secret keeping.

Brenna is beside herself with pride and joy with her new baby.  She’s named it Speckles– a good unisex name since it will be a few months until we can tell if it is a he or a she.  It is so tiny– its body just about the length of her pinky finger.  She stands at the kitchen counter and stares through the glass of its temporary cage, in awe of every little leap, the way its little toes curl as it walks, the way it licks its tiny face and eyes, and hoping that Santa will be kind enough to bring her the perfect cage to keep in her room.

(There may be more baby geckos around here in a few months because my brother also sent me an adult male he didn’t want anymore.  When he arrived I put him in Kiri’s cage– the poor guy was so cold his limbs were shaking as he climbed.  I thought it would take a while for him to warm up and recover from being shipped in a cold dark box, but an hour later, when Barry got home from work and the kids all ran to the cage to show Dad our new friend, he and Kiri had already found each other and gave us all a graphic lesson about the birds and the bees.)

Oh, and there is a more important addition to our family.  When my brother called from the UPS station he also said that he was headed to the hospital, his wife was already there and checked in.  A few hours later little Jet Neil was born!  Now, baby lizards are cute, but little baby humans are the very best kind of babies.