Princess Leia

We actually did it.

We got a pet rat! Her name of course, is Princess Leia. She took to me instantly. My fiance and daughter picked her name. We only got one rat. Why? Well, after visiting 3 different pet stores we finally found one with a female. Problem? They only had one female. She’s only a couple months old. She’s been here for about 4 days now and is getting more and more comfortable with us. Since she’s a singleton, I try to make sure we interact with her as much as possible. She’s quite shy. We got her some toys and wheels but she has yet to touch them and she keeps to herself, all curled up in her log unless we take her out. It does make me nervous after reading about pet rats. I really think she needs a rat friend. The woman at the pet store said she had plenty pet rats in her lifetime and she always had one at a time. At the moment, I am chalking up her chill behavior to her adjusting – or it could be her personality. They say girls are active but she doesn’t move much.

I think I’m going to get her a friend. I’ll have to search around for another female. Apparently they are hard to come by around here. All the stores carried males.

She is curious.
She makes a mess of her cage. Always flipping her water and taking her food out of the food bowl and into her log. She loves to be scratched on her cheeks and cuddle up close to you. She’s really cute. I seriously never thought the day would come where I said I owned a pet rat, but here it is. I do. We do. The family rat.

Here’s to more adventures.

❤

 

ohhhh RATS!

Before children, my fiance and I failed with pets. We just worked too much. We had to travel far for work which just added to the never ending hours we never spent at home. We did try. We tried different types of pets. Dogs? I’m really not a dog person. I know, I must be some sort of demon. Who doesn’t like dogs!? – I don’t.  Cats? Too rebellious (at least the ones I picked were. Never ask for my advice on which cat to choose. It will most likely be an asshole.) Fish? They worked perfectly! We had a beautiful betta that lived for 4 years! I changed it’s rocks for a different look and a couple days after, it died unexpectedly. Coincidence? I hope so.
I really miss that fish.

We had leopard geckos. Awesome pets! Kinddd of boring. They don’t do much and they are not fond of being held/touched. Can get stinky if you don’t keep up with their home. Their food stinks too. If you have a pet gecko, you also have pet crickets, in which you must feed and keep alive. Yuck. We had three. One died from starvation, the other was literally eaten by the third one who grew at an incredible rate (dominated all the food). Then that one somehow escaped to never be seen again. I hope it’s happy and had little leopard gecko babies. Or maybe a bird got it.

Now that I am a stay at home mother, we have been on the search for the perfect family pet. Hamsters? Out of the question. Too mean. Stink. Guinea Pigs? Maybe. Turtles? Stinky. Another gecko? hmmm. Dog – heck no. Cat – heck no. A Pig? Ha. I wish! However my HOA would neverrrrrrr allow it. When it came down to the list of easy pets, it has narrowed down to rats.

You read correctly.

RATS.

Apparently rats are very easy, cuddly, and surprisingly CLEAN pets to have. The more research I did, the more I found that they do need company…no matter how much love and attention we give it. Therefore, I would need to purchase two rats.

Oh lovely.

My 8 yr old sure is excited and forced us to create a list of names. What do you think?

These are what we have come up with:

Strangely enough, when my son was about 9 months old, we took a trip to Ikea and he saw this little stuffed animal rat. He wouldn’t give it up so we purchased it for him. It became his favorite stuffed animal toy that I went back to Ikea months later to purchase more just incase the one we had got lost. (If you check out my DIY blog on his playroom, you can probably spy those rats somewhere.) Now we have all these little stuffed rats that he plays with. He would totally FREAK if we got real – live pet rats.

We’re still deciding though. Just to make sure we are 105% down.

Play Room

 

Welcome to The Little Wards’ playroom!

This room is constantly evolving because I am always coming up with different ideas.

A little bit about the room:

• The wooden alphabet letters were purchased from the target craft section. I stained them, I then painted the vowels with yellow chevrons and distressed them.
• The little blue and red shelves are wooden kitchen spice racks from Ikea.
  Also from Ikea – the road rug, the white cube shelves, and all of the picture frames.
• The wire cube baskets are from Target.