The Trixie Update

The Trixie Update is going on a break until next Monday. Last week really took its toll on us. The vomiting wasn’t such a big deal, but the lack of sleep was devastating. Plus Jenn has been on call and she’s on call again this week. Sorry for the downtime, but we’ll be back, recharged, and ready to report. See you next week!

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We’ve had a little throwing up problem lately. As documented in last Tuesday’s Pedialyte entry, Trixie threw up for the first time in many, many months. Now just a week later, she did it again. There’s no need to rehash the details. You can simply skim through the Pedialyte story and replace all instances of “Jenn” with “Ben” when it’s in the context of someone getting thrown up on.

We suspect that last week’s ordeal was the result of over-eating. We don’t really have an explanation for the latest round. The doctor’s office isn’t concerned as long as she doesn’t have a fever. And Trixie was right as rain the next morning. So we chalked it up as another anomaly — until she threw up one more time last night.

The problem with last night’s incident is that there are too many variables to figure out the cause.

1) She was way over-tired because of her interrupted sleep pattern from the night before.

2) She was very upset and crying hysterically when she threw up. This is in contrast to the previous night when she was relatively calm and yet threw up four times.

3) She only got upset at night - she was totally happy during the day and didn’t fight any of her naps.

4) So are we encountering some kind of horrific, nighttime, sleep-training backslide?

5) She didn’t have any strange foods yesterday at all. Just milk, green beans and Cheerios. Nothing new there.

6) And finally, she’s teething again.

Anyway, I included the above details just in case someone was going to ask about them. I think it might be a little of everything. At any rate, it seems to have passed. She was super happy today and she’s currently sleeping peacefully. We’ll be fine. But this brings me to main reason for this post… what’s the worst thing to clean up?

You don’t have to be a parent to answer this question. Maybe you had a college roommate who would come home drunk and mistake the hall closet for the bathroom. Maybe your coworker got a little too crazy at the office party. Maybe you have pets. Whatever the cause, please vote on what you think is the worst thing to clean up. Personally, I am so sick of washing vomit out of everything that I could cry. I almost want her diaper to leak just for some variety. Voice your opinion in the new TTU poll (to your left under ‘Latest TTU Comments’.)

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It can be tough to decide on a baby name. How did you end up making your decision? Let us know in the new TTU poll (to your left under ‘Latest TTU Comments’.)

 
include_once "/home/trixie3/public_html/poll/booth.php";
$php_poll->set_template_set(”plain”);
$php_poll->set_max_bar_length(125);
$php_poll->set_max_bar_height(10);
echo $php_poll->poll_process(17);
?>

 

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Or You’re Going to Call Your Baby What? (Part 2)

I don’t recall exactly how we were drawn to Beatrix. Part of it was because it’s an older name. According to the Social Security Administration’s Popular Baby Names database, Beatrice (and variations thereof) had decreased in popularity from the top 40’s in the first decades of the 20th century to #546 in the 1990’s. And as such, it seemed like a good name that has simply been out of fashion for about seven decades.

The only problem was everyone’s reaction to the name: “You know [pause], it sounds like a Vegas hooker,” “You know, uhhh, it sounds like an aging truck-stop waitress” and “I knew a tranny named Trixie.” We desperately tried to find out if there were any positive associations out there. Doesn’t anyone name their daughter Beatrix? Isn’t Trixie a cute name for a spunky, little girl skipping around? Won’t Bea make a cool nickname in high school? A google search wasn’t very helpful. There were plenty of pet ferrets, lizards and a sheep dog named Trixie, but no cute little babies — only wrinkly, raspy-voiced, little babies that reeked of stale cigarette smoke and diesel fumes.

We turned to the parent message forums next. We had to find out if we were condemning our daughter to years of ribbing. Now, nothing against these message boards, but they can be pretty predictable and repetitive as each new wave of soon-to-be parents logs on and posts something along the lines of:

Then tons of people write in about how both variations are truly beautiful and it’s a great name - a beautiful name - and congratulations!

And so, searching for validation, we took our turn at the wheel and declared our intention to use the name Beatrix. The reaction was less than encouraging. We got a lot of those Vegas/waitress reactions listed above as well as “it sounds like an old fat lady.” I was really surprised at such a cold reaction. I was like, what the hell, it’s a perfectly nice name, it’s just a little less popular. I needed to see if there was a baseline for determining truly bad baby names. I posted that we were considering a few unorthodox ones for our new daughter. The reaction was furious:

Yes, I was kidding, but I had to see what would spark true outrage over a baby name. It didn’t really solve anything, but it made us realize that we should just find a name that works for us and not everybody else. (But, to be totally honest, I really do like the name Deimos. And Jennifer is still a fan of Phosphor.)

In the end, Beatrix won us over. I like it from a typographical perspective and we decided that Trixie wouldn’t be that out of place. Old-fashioned names are definitely making a comeback. Plus, people will start to remap their associations. Pretty soon, the message boards will be buzzing with “Trixie? That’s an adorable name! My drag queen friend just named his kid that!”

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Or You’re Going to Call Your Baby What? (Part 1)

About this time last year, we started to get serious about the whole baby name thing. We had a great list for boys, but let’s face it, Jenn was not going to let me name our daughter Strong-O. So we started down the path that all expectant parents eventually wander onto — the one that leads to that section of the book store titled “Baby Names.” It’s a horribly stupid section where books truly can be judged by their cover. 90,001 Baby Names always trumps 40,000 Baby Names that Work For You! And who would waste their time with The Absolute Best 1,000 Names for Your Baby? Only those that can’t count. (In the spirit of full disclosure, I’ll admit that we bought a baby name book — but not one with a numeric title.)

You also have to be careful not to hang out there too long because all the quiet murmuring will drive you crazy. Not at first, but eventually you will wake up screaming, the faint whispers of “Jacob? no… Olivia? no… Ryan? no… Madison? no… Genevieve?… Tatum?… Deandre?… Deandre?… Deandre?…” still echoing in your head.

We were driven by one overriding principle - not another Jennifer. That is to say, not another name that occurred with the same frequency as Jennifer did for babies born back in the 70’s. Our guide was the Social Security Administration - specifically the Popular Baby Names database that aggregates the top 1000 most frequently occurring names for every decade of this past century. (Since 1990, you can see the breakdown for each year.)

If you visit Most Popular Names of the 1970’s, you’ll see that smack at the top of the list is Jennifer. It was the most popular name of the whole decade, and that explains why there were always between 3 and 25 Jennifers in every class from Kindergarten to High School. Jenn didn’t want our daughter to have to go through that sort of identity dilution. I was more fortunate; Benjamin was only the 42nd most popular.

The names that we were initially drawn to were somewhat disappointingly at the top of the 2002 list. In retrospect, it isn’t that surprising; those names probably seeped into our heads because they were popular. At any rate, we tried to delve a little deeper with the ultimate goal of striking a balance between an unique name and an albatross.

As we discovered, it’s difficult to decide on a name in a vacuum. It’s even worse to start asking other people.

Coming tomorrow: Well, then how about…

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This is probably going to be the last post I make on TTU about Trixie Telemetry because…

I am happy to announce that we have created a new web site to answer questions and keep you informed as we continue to develop the software. (And also because this site is really supposed to be about Trixie.)

Our new software site is: http://www.trixietracker.com

You can find more information about our new Trixie Tracker service and the Trixie Code at this site. There is also a place to sign up if you are interested in participating in beta testing.

In the meantime, we’ll still be here documenting, charting and graphing, just as soon as we catch up on some sleep.

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The advertising on the box says to use Pedialyte instead of sports drinks or juices to replace lost fluids in sick children. I’m surprised this line of thinking hasn’t been picked up outside of the dehydrated baby market. Pedialyte should be the ultimate underground sports drink. There could be a cult of Pedialyte junkies tearing up the court in pick-up games across the country. It could be kind of like that pacifier fad back in the 90’s.

Anyway, Trixie staring crying about 10:30 last night. Jenn went to comfort her but came out holding a wet blanket. We thought maybe her diaper had leaked. We go back in, turn on the lights, and see that she had thrown up everywhere. Food was splattered on the wall, the floor, the sheets, Frank, the bear, her clothes. It almost seemed that maybe she started throwing up in the standing position and then ran around the crib a few times. To use an art metaphor, it was Pollack in action, minus the drinking and cigarettes.

This was the first time Trixie had thrown up in maybe 7-8 months. We were a little concerned, but it looked like she had just eaten too much during the day. Otherwise, sometimes babies get a little stomach virus. It’s normal, although not particularly comforting at 11:00 at night.

We gave her a bath to get all the throw up off, got her some fresh, clean clothes and took her to our bed since her stuff was all in the washer. Three minutes later, she throws up again. Sheets, pillows, mattress cover, herself and Jennifer - all covered in it. Jenn gave her another bath (actually the third for the day, because we gave her one before bedtime) while I stripped the bed and tried to figure out who gets to sleep where.

We dried her off once again, did the fresh clothes thing (for both Jenn and Trixie) and decided that she needed to drink some fluids. We did haven’t any clear juices in the house so I had to make a trip to the grocery store. While Jenn was holding Trixie and looking for Pedialyte coupons, Trixie threw up again, completely covering both of them. (Somewhat unfairly, I didn’t get thrown up on the entire night.) Jennifer and Trixie had to take one last bath (the 4th) while I ran to the store.

Triumphant in procuring white grape juice and Pedialyte, we tried to get Trixie to drink some. No dice. I don’t really blame her. The stuff is insanely sweet, maybe a little like refined and concentrated Red Bull. We kept cutting it with water to see if she would drink some until we had worked our way down to 1 part Pedialyte to 1000 parts water. At this point we just her a couple of ice cubes in washcloth, which she greedily sucked and put her off to bed.

Everything seems fine this morning. She has some sleep to catch up on but is drinking plenty, and is happy.

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Our disposable diaper history ends in 2004 and I have to say that I’m glad it’s over. I still think the concept was fun and the actual history extremely interesting, but researching the topic took way too much time. I’m not writing about anything else that I can’t directly observe, namely Trixie.

The problem is that each uncovered fact would take me in a whole new research direction. For example, I found just one tiny, tantalizing fact about how one of the original Luvs designers had worked on the Gemini space program. I thought this was a great piece of information. I tried to find out more about NASA’s contribution to the disposable diaper, and ultimately found nothing — but not before I wasted a lot of time googling.

Now that we’ve looked back on 58 years of disposable history, let’s hear from you. Voice your opinion in the latest poll.
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That’s a lot of diapers. I’m still shocked when I step back and think about the total number she has gone through. It’s depressing.

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Sorry about the lack of stories lately. We’re working on it. The Diaper History feature will be wrapping up later today with a small closing piece, and then we’ll get back to writing about Trixie (hopefully by the end of the week). In the meantime, we’ve got a new poll to reflect all the diaper controversy. Have at it. Go vote in the latest Trixie poll (to your left under ‘Latest TTU Comments’.)

 
include_once "/home/trixie3/public_html/poll/booth.php";
$php_poll->set_template_set(”plain”);
$php_poll->set_max_bar_length(125);
$php_poll->set_max_bar_height(10);
echo $php_poll->poll_process(16);
?>

 

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