Thanks for the advice.

They are a lot better now, today they were crawling all over me, and tickling my ear- boy oh boy does that tickle! I never held them when they were pinkies, because my teacher did that once with the classroom pet rat, and she abandoned the babies- and Mrs. Poetzel had to bottle feed them til they were weened. I did lift up the box every now and then to make sure they were all nursing - they were.

I remember Nugget did have one runt in the litter which ended up dying. She came dragging him out of the box, and set him in the corner, and ignored him. I picked him up right away with a warm glove- since my hands were cold. I noticed he/she was EXTREMELY tiny compared to the other guys- and he had a huge hole in his/her neck. Before I could go buy him some replacement milk (or do anything for that matter) - he passed away He was the 9th baby in that litter. My friend and I had a little candle light burrial in the garden. We called him Little Man- even tho it could have been a girl.

Yes.... Sweet Pea is Nugget's daughter.