Mathilda's Big Play Date

Well it's official. We've become those somewhat endearing, slightly annoying "pet" parents who post Facebook pictures of their "children."

We've been working with the gliders to get them to trust us over the past four and a half weeks with mixed results. Mathilda (the smaller of the two) has been pretty receptive from the start and although a few bumps in the road (and a few nips of the hand), she has gotten to the point where we can handle her. Fiona on the other hand, is a bit more of a handful, but that's a different post.

When I came home last night, Alex had her out of the cage and they were playing! Sitting on the floor in a pile of change that was falling out of his pockets (making it "hail in the club" he told me), he was holding her in one hand and she was jumping back and forth.





In this shot I think Alex is watching NCIS -- he looked happier in real life. But anyway, that aforementioned dorky pet parent thing? Well, of course we have videos. This a particularly cute one of Mathilda sitting in Alex's hand eating an apple. It's funny because they don't seem to actually eat the apple so much as shred tiny pieces off, suck the water out, and spit the pieces all over my carpet.

After a little snack, she got to exploring. Here she is trying to figure out how to get into Daddy's hoodie. (Yes, we refer to each other as Mommy and Daddy...again with the pet parents thing).





They are actually little marsupials and they bond to you by being next to your skin, so they like to try to be in your pockets and under your clothing. They actually gave us a pouch with a screen on one side and we're supposed to keep them in in with the screen side against our skin while they're sleeping during the day so that they get used to being around our scent. I actually have both of them on me right now which is sort of hilarious because I look like I have a little preggo belly under my tank top. It's even funnier when Alex grows his little preggo belly. Seriously strange looking. No pictures of that yet. Don't need to be freaking people out with this dual pregnancy thing. We're already sort of a weird couple.

Well anyway, apparently now that Mathilda is getting used to us, she also likes to groom us. She actually licks Alex's hands like they're covered in sugar glider crack. Apparently my hands don't hold any particular interest, but she did seem to like to lick my forehead. She actually sat on my head and groomed me for a bit. I'm totally jealous because Mathilda is a Daddy's girl, but she did warm up to me after a bit.

And of course one of the most fun things about these little guys is the fact that they "fly." This is by far my favorite video but of course it's not oriented correctly. So everyone turn their heads to the side until I get around to figuring out how to do that and see how cute this is.

She actually jumped right on my camera. So now that we've gotten this far with Mathilda, the hope is that Fiona will join her sister in hanging out with us soon. And of course there's more pictures here.