Am i doing this right??? Help!!!

[Daniogirl]

We bought "Lilo" from a reptile show last august as a 14" juvenile ball python. They sexed her for us and said she was about 4-5 months old and was captive bred, and would grow to be about 3-5 ft long.

Well since we've had her,(10 months), we've upgrade her 20 gallon tank to a 48" long 55 gallon refurbished fish tank. Some bone head at the local pet store said.."oh yeah.. use this sand... it's great!!!" it looked great,and was easy to clean with a kitty litter scooper, but we eventually realized that pythons aren't desert snakes<<DUH!!>> , and found out that it can harm them, so, we've recently changed her substrate to bark. Which also looks great!

We had trouble with the tank staying at a constant temperature, it would fluctuate between 60 and 80 degrees on the hot side of the tank. So, we've recently added a red heat lamp which brings the temp up toa constant temp of about 95 and we mist daily with a spray bottle, to bring the humidity up and turned off the heat pad under neath since it's summer time..we are worried about baking her!

Now, our little "Lilo" has shed about 7-8 times since we've had her and she is now 2/3 the length of the tank( so about 3 ft). She is only about as wide as 2 of my fingers (~1.5-2") so i know she has more growing to do. But do ball pythons normally shed so much??? i mean she has quadrupled in size since we've gotten her.

We currently feed her 1 live mouse a week. but we have upon occassion given her 2 mice, which she had no problems dispatching. she is a no nonsense eater,dispatching the mice very quickly (within 30 seconds for the last one).

Since she is still growing so much, and she always seems hungry, if another mouse is available, should i start giveing her 2 mice a week (together or on separate days?) or should i upgrade her to baby rats? her girth doesn't seem to be too big, but when compared to her length, she seems to be skinny for a ball.

i'm guessing she's about 15 months old now, but i don't know if she is at an ok size. and the pet store people here in Woodland, CA don't know anything about snakes, really, muchless carry mice on a regular basis, and i've read my python book but, it's so scientific that it confuses me & i still can't tell if i'm treatingher well. She is alert,eats well, looks healthy (even thought she's little in width), feels strong when we hold her, but she's having difficult & incomplete shed, and i'm just worried that i'm doing something wrong???