So, here goes my month of posting (nearly) every day.  I’ve got a lot of catching up to do and new adventures to document.  I’m even digging through the boxes in the basement labeled “craft room,” so I’m hoping there will be some making of things happening in the very near future too.

But, important things first.  I must tell you about the new addition to our family.

When I was pregnant with Ian and started really wanting a new puppy to keep Ellie company, I realized there has been a trend through all of my pregnancies.  All the hormones really kick into over drive and I NEED something to take care of RIGHT NOW.  Not in a few months, but as soon as possible.  With Brenna I wanted a cat.  Our landlords overruled that desire, but couldn’t stop me from feeding the ferral kittens that lived in the bushes or letting the neighbor’s cat in for a few minutes every now and then for a little snuggle.  When I was pregnant with Jonah I wanted a whippet.  I prayed about getting a whippet.  I found a whippet breeder and took Barry and Brenna to visit.  We didn’t have a fence, though, or the extra money for a dog, so I painfully abstained.  Then, when we moved to Ohio and I was pregnant with Logan I got the itch to learn to spin my own yarn.  There was no feasible way to fit a couple of alpacas into our back yard, so I fell head first into an obsession with angora rabbits.  So, early this summer, when we were in Alabama pouring over Denver rental listings on craigslist and my number one criteria was to find a place that I could have a few backyard chickens, I should have seen the writing on the wall and knew I was expecting again.  Our housing hunt made me realize that I had pretty unrealistic expectations and with a heart almost as broken as it was in the whippet days, I resigned myself to reality that I would just have to wait until February for the real little thing to take care of and realize that my obsession with obtaining some egg laying companions was not just a quest for sustainable self sufficiency, but just hormone bathed mania.

My stay in Boise distracted me a bit from my quest for backyard chickens.  (Did you know that anywhere in Boise city limits you can have up to 3 chickens in your backyard?  I couldn’t convince my mom, though.)  I mean, how could you resist this

may I ask?  Meet Kiri, my new crested gecko.   My brother had just started collecting these cute little critters before I got there.  When Brenna saw them, she was in love.  We had told her over and over that when she was 8 she would be old enough to have a pet of her own, but she couldn’t decide what that would be, exactly.  I wasn’t overly excited about anything that would eat crickets or meal worms, but her requests were most often for tree frogs or salamanders.  The cool thing about crested geckos is that they don’t need special lights and live naturally at comfortable room temperature.  You can even forgo the cricket feeding if you give them enough calcium and other vitamins mixed into the baby food that they eat.  So, my brother was going to let her take one home.  Then that gecko laid eggs.  Brenna was so excited.  The eggs would hatch in time for her to open a package with a tiny baby gecko in it on Christmas morning.  She has a much more patient spirit than her mother.  I was secretly disappointed that we wouldn’t be bringing a little lizard with us to our new home right now.  My brother could tell, so he gave one to me for my very own.

So, I know it’s pretty silly, this maternal pregnancy induced drive I have to get a new pet.

But, you must admit that my new pet is really cool.