The Trixie Update

We’re getting tens of thousands of new visitors today courtesy Kim Komando, who hosts a computer talkradio show. (I’m not clear on whether the mention was on the radio, or in her daily email. Maybe someone could clarify that.) As a result, we crashed hard a couple of hours ago. We’re still having some pretty big problems and a lot of the images and charts are down. We’re glad you’re visiting but it might be better to come back tomorrow. thanks-

[UPDATE] Sat Evening: We’re back. There are still some images that are down, but they will be coming up shortly. It’s OK to post comments now. If you posted a message earlier and it’s not here, it unfortunately got erased during the crash and server migration. I recovered all that I could. I apologize if something got lost.

Trixie Telemetry, one of the main features of the site, is still down, but I hope to get it back online soon.

[UPDATE] Sat Night: All images are back online. Telemetry should be back up by Sunday.

[UPDATE] Sun Morning: Telemetry will be up intermittently today, depending on the server load. I can’t risk it failing — how would I know when her bottle is expired or when it’s time for a nap?

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Mine have lead to Trixie’s. Against the advice of my Mom, Gramma, various co-workers over the years and every dentist in the world, I eat ice all the time. Some of this has spilled over to Trixie when I started feeding her ice back when she was teething. Now she has a vicious appetite for it.

If she sees one of us with a glass of ice water, she immediately plunges her entire hand into the glass. It’s like watching a bear try to swipe salmon. She’s usually not very successful at actually grabbing a piece because she’s shocked anew every time by the ice-cold temperature, but she has fun splashing water everywhere with her numb, blue hand.

It didn’t take her long to figure out that the ice in the cup eventually becomes ice in my mouth. While I can hold a cup at arms length from her, it’s harder to hold her and keep her away from my mouth at the same time. If she hears me crunching a piece, she’ll grab my lips with both hands and pry them apart with freakish baby-strength. I’m able to keep my teeth locked shut, but I eventually yield and give her the ice because I’m afraid she’s going to tear my lip off. I’ve already had to start cutting her fingernails every other day because my gums were getting sliced to pieces by her little razor tipped fingers.

Long story short, Trixie is making me kick the habit out of simple self-defense. But eating ice barely seems like a bad habit anymore, at least compared to reaching elbow deep into somebody else’s mouth.

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Trixie totally just peed in her little plastic potty.

We’ve only had the potty about a week. The idea was that we would get Trixie used to going into the bathroom and sitting down with us. (She always follows us in there anyway.) And so she just sits on it with her clothes on and hangs out.

Today, however, we were getting ready to get in the shower. (Side note: She takes a shower with me now because 1) she has a good time in there and 2) it means I don’t have to waste precious personal time showering during her naps.) Anyway, I sat her down on the potty naked and - BAM - there she goes. I was so shocked and surprised I didn’t know what to do next. I have no idea how you’re supposed to properly dispose of a plastic container full of pee so I just stuck the whole thing in the fridge so I can ask Jenn about it later.

I’m sure today’s potty party was a fluke, but I’m still excited. A guy can dream right? Trixie says, “No”. While I was busy making plans to burn our remaining diapers on a bonfire tonight, she waited until we were out of the shower and she had a new diaper on — and then she let loose a horrible mess. Maybe it’s not quite time to get rid of the diapers.

[UPDATE] Just wanted to make sure everyone knows that the fridge part was a joke. We’re getting a lot of new traffic today from The Daily Bikini, and I didn’t want first-time visitors to get the wrong idea about the site. BTW, if you are a new visitor, I recommend the charts and graphs in the Metrics section. It’s one of the more interesting parts of the Trixie Update.

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I always imagined that real babies would wake up the way they do in cartoons. You know, a sunbeam breaks through the blinds, and the sleepy little baby slowly blinks awake, streeeeetches, yawwwns, and maybe even rolls over in an attempt to snuggle back to dreamland.

So, my question is, is there any way to get them to stop screaming when they just wake up? I guess first I should ask whether it’s something that all babies do, or if it’s only Trixie.

No matter what time of day she wakes up, whether it’s after a good night’s sleep or just a 38-minute nap, Trixie is vertical and hollering within seconds of waking.

I’ve watched her wake up before. When it’s close to the end of her nap, I’ll peek in from behind the door. She’ll usually be peacefully sprawled out. Then without warning, she’ll twitch a little and suddenly flip herself over and urgently begin to pull up on the crib bars — all in one move. Picture someone in a cage being lowered into a pool of water. That’s the sort of desperate struggling, yelling and clawing up the side of the crib I’m talking about.

The panic stops the instant one of us goes to pick her up, so it’s not something I’m concerned about. Besides, the quirky wake state could simply be a genetic trait she got from her mother. Jenn tends to wake up rather ‘alert’. I once slept through a tornado that removed the roof from my house.

Otherwise, I figure Trixie’s either having bad dreams right before she wakes up or she’s naturally suited to join one of those fringe conspiracy groups where sleeping with your boots on and waking up in a state of emergency is encouraged. All I know is that when the revolution comes, she’ll be ready.

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When Lisa made a perpetual motion machine, Homer Simpson told her, “In this house, we OBEY the LAWS of THERMODYNAMICS!” What forces or properties of the universe is your baby discovering? (Or maybe trying to violate?) Let us know in the new TTU poll (to your left under ‘Latest TTU Comments’.)

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The physical laws of the universe as previously understood by Trixie were pretty simple. By application of gesture or voice, she could fully expect toys, milk or parents to fly across the room, coming to rest in her outstretched hands. From her perspective, gravity was easy to overlook — it was completely obscured by the extremely powerful Trixie force.

But small cracks began to appear in her world view. She discovered that sometimes a Cheerio would break free from the Trixie force (t) and hurl itself to the ground. Disturbing to be sure, but easy enough to overlook — after all, it’s only a Cheerio. But as more and larger objects began to behave in unpredictable and heretical ways, she was forced to reexamine her unraveling world view.

To her amusement, curiosity, and frustration, she has been probing this infinitely entertaining phenomena for maybe a month or two. Almost every night, after we have put a sleepy Trixie to bed, she’ll start hollering. Invariably the problem is that her blankets, animals or pillow have ‘accidentally fallen’ out of the crib.

I walk in and she’s always peering over the edge of the crib, staring at the pile of discarded stuff. She knows full well how everything ended up on the floor, but she still gives me the old, “It’s the darnedest thing, Dad. They just fell out.” If she could shrug, she would.

So we place everything back in the crib and she quickly throws everything back on the floor. The pattern repeats about 10 times a night. And if we try to stop her by holding on to one end of a blanket that’s destined for ‘testing’, she’ll wail. It’s almost like we’ve cut off her research funding.

This bedtime stuff is tolerable; the mealtime experiments are more tiring. Baby food isn’t as easy to clean up off the floor as a blanket. And at mealtime, everything goes on the floor: Cheerios have no business being on the table. And it’s critical to find out if applesauce bounces or splats. She also needs to stare at each fallen item for a good long time just to make sure it’s not going to suddenly fly back up on the table.

I beg her, “Stop these mad experiments now!! You don’t know what you’re doing! You’re playing God with the applesauce!” But Trixie remains undeterred. Her research has bumped right up against the blurred edges of the quantum universe. Yet she continues her struggle to reconcile gravity and the Trixie force in an unified theory.

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