The Trixie Update

It was worth it. Even the rolling around on the floor with Ebola leaking out out of my face, clutching my stomach in agony part. Trixie loves daycare now, and the whole household is as well as we have been in several months.

I haven’t been sick the entire time. At the end of last week, things were looking much better. By Friday, I felt like eating again. By Saturday, I declared myself well. But apparently the virus was only incubating, growing stronger. On Sunday I caught it all over again, and it put me out of commission for a good 3 days. I can honestly say I’ve never been so sick in my whole life as I have the last month and a half.

Trixie, on the other hand, spent one day vomiting and basically recovered. She was cranky for a couple of days afterwards, but it’s impossible to tell whether that was because she was a recovering sicko or just stressed from the new daycare environment (or some combination of the two.) Matter of fact, there were so many adverse events during the weeks following Trixie’s entry to daycare — from vomiting to separation anxiety to a morning nap relapse — that it’s hard to get a handle on how out of whack life has been around here. Here’s a short summary to help explain the daycare* transition:

*Trixie is in part-time daycare (mornings) Monday-Friday. She started at 18 months.

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Trixie’s bug has hit me in a serious way. Just wanted to let you guys know that Trixie seems like she’s going to be fine, and that I’m not ignoring the comments — I just can’t respond at the current time.

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[Note] An update has been added to the end of this post.

How short my memory is. It was only last week that Trixie was throwing up with a stomach bug, but it might as well have been the week before because I had completely forgotten what constitutes a real problem when it comes to toddlers.

Yesterday I was up in arms about a less than ideal nap schedule. Today I asked the daycare to encourage her to stay awake if she started acting sleepy. So how did it go? The results are mixed. On the plus side, she did not take a nap this morning. On the negative side, she did puke everywhere around 11:15am. And apparently she was acting tired right before this happened, so who knows, maybe she would have slept had it not been for the inconvenience of projectile vomiting.

I went and collected her and brought her back home. Just in time to discover what frantic pawing at the mouth means. Here’s a hint: It doesn’t mean, “My teeth hurt from teething.” BTW, Jenn, don’t throw your stuff on the couch when you get home.

With Trixie in her third change of clothes for the day, and my second, I foolishly give her a saltine cracker to settle her stomach. This is the part of the story where I tell expectant, concerned readers that hardwood floors are worth a few mild concussions because they are much, much easier to clean up than carpet.

Secure in her fourth change of clothes, Trixie dropped off to sleep a few minutes ahead of schedule at 12:51pm. The household is once again running like clockwork.

[UPDATE 2/15/05 4:05pm] Now the household is running like a broken clock. Trixie has thrown up 7 times total today. We’ve been to the doctor and we’re waiting to see if she can keep water down. If that works we’ll move up to diluted apple juice, otherwise I guess we’ll have a “Trixie goes to the ER” TPOD week.

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[Note] An update has been added to the end of this post.

I know, you should never post things on your blog that might get you into trouble, especially when it comes to your daycare provider. But I’m not too worried — they have never read this blog. If they did, then they wouldn’t be under the assumption that Trixie takes a nap every morning at 10:30.

I have no idea what goes on at daycare, but once again I pick up Trixie today and find out that she took another 30 minute nap. I’m like, “What the hell!??”

Not at the daycare, of course. There it’s more like, “Hmmm, that’s very interesting. She took a morning nap, you don’t say?” But the whole time I’m thinking, “Trixie has been on a one-nap-a-day schedule since almost the beginning of December, and I’ve got 10,000 points of data to prove it, so what gives?” Um, yeah, I’ll probably have to take this post down…

Anyway, I usually drop her off around 8:30-8:45, and she ends up taken a nap there around 10:30 every single day. Is she really getting that exhausted in less than two hours? If she is, then fine, but I find it hard to believe. I’m not suggesting that they are making Trixie go to sleep, because as far as I know, that’s impossible. Basically, I guess I don’t understand what is going on, and the reason it’s a problem is that it’s messing up the rest of Trixie’s schedule. In particular, it’s throwing her afternoon nap into a tailspin.

To play the devil’s advocate, Trixie has spent the last week and a half getting over a stomach virus. It has affected her appetite and was responsible for the morning naps she took last week. But she’s better now. She didn’t take any naps this past weekend, and I figured we were back on schedule. I guess we’ll just have to see what happens over the next couple of days. If daycare is really that überstimulating or if she’s still not 100% well, and she needs a short catnap, then I’m glad she’s getting it. I’ll apologize for this misguided steam-releasing rant. But just don’t tell me that a 10:30 morning nap is normal or regular.

[UPDATE 2/14/05 2:48pm] I just thought of one more thing. Trixie is having major, major separation anxiety when I drop her off in the morning that results in 10-15 minutes of terrified, inconsolable crying and banshee screaming. Maybe that energy expenditure is enough to knock her out for a short morning nap.

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At the request of a reader, I pulled together some of visual patterns we tested on Trixie as an infant. However, for liability reasons, the Trixie Update doesn’t recommend using these for children under the age of 12.

The Trixie Update Human Infant Visual Stimulation Design Pattern Kit
Download: (PDF 68k)

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Trixie is back in daycare today after so far missing 3 out of 8 scheduled days due to stomach problems. That leaves quite a bit of room for improvement. No one passes out gold stars for a 63% attendance record. Our primary concern is for Trixie to feel better and enjoy her time at daycare, of course, but my next thought is, “What a waste of money!!”

Now, I don’t fault the daycare — we are paying to reserve the space whether or not it’s actually filled by a child every day. But the situation makes me think that there may be a market for daycare sickness insurance. You could pay a small premium to hedge against lost days. Or maybe it could even be set up like options where it’s tied to the calendar. Buying sickness calls at the beginning of the flu season cost more than in the middle of summer. Maybe they could even be traded in a daycare hedge market. Parents of healthy kids would make a killing as they sell off contracts to those whose children are setting new records in projectile vomiting. It might sound crazy now, but this time next year we’ll see Superbowl Ads — complete with CG talking babies — for DaycareHedge.com.

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So, as reported below, no more Diaper Telemetry. I’m sure the disposable diaper companies are glad it’s gone. They don’t want you thinking about how many diapers a baby goes through — it’s not good for their business. I’ve gotten a handful of emails/comments from site visitors who decided to go cloth or ecological or banana leaves after seeing how many diapers a single baby can consume.

For the benefit of new readers, yes, we used disposables. But before anyone yells at me for so far sending 3,500 diapers to the landfill, just hold on. Nothing went to the landfill. They’re all in a storage unit out on Highway-54 for safekeeping.

Anyway, that’s all yesterday’s news. The big news today is that I am no longer a 100% stay-at-home dad. Trixie is now in part-time daycare. She started last week on what was supposed to be a Mon/Wed/Fri full day. She went for a half-day Monday, a full day Wednesday, and started throwing up Thursday.

Much in the way Native Americans were decimated by the European-born smallpox, Trixie was no match for the daycare super-germs. Everyone told us it would happen, but I didn’t realize I would be able to set my watch by it. After a weekend of recovery, we started her back this morning. We’re now doing M-F mornings, so that she’ll have a regular day-to-day schedule. This way she’ll also get to take her nap at home where she feels more comfortable.

As for me, I’m still at home the whole day, but now I finally get to do some serious work on Trixie Tracker in the mornings. That was one reason that we needed to send Trixie to daycare. That and I was slowly losing my sense of humor. We’re also doing it to help with her socialization. She’s still not really talking yet, and we feel it would be a good thing for her to play in a group setting.

Lastly, I feel compelled to address all the insane wackos who have visited this site once and then gone back to their blogs and ranted about how I should spend more time with my daughter. Just to set the record straight, they finally have a leg to stand on. It’s finally physically possible for me to spend more time with daughter. But I’m not going to, just to spite them.

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I’m discontinuing Diaper Telemetry in the near future. There are a bunch of reasons, but the biggest is that Trixie is getting better and better at using the potty. Recently there have been several times that we were able to put a ‘used’ diaper back on because it was completely dry. Therefore the diaper count no longer corresponds to bathroom habits, which undermines its previous usefulness.

I’ve also decided to leave a little bit of ambiguity in the system. I used to think it would be funny to know exactly how many diapers we went through, and ruthlessly exploit that number in the future. Trixie would grow tired of hearing “Because your mother and I changed [Total_Diaper_Count] diapers when you were a baby — that’s why it’s my turn to play PlayStation 5!”

However, I now think that Trixie might appreciate it if the final number is never nailed down. It’s true that we’ll know the minimum, but beyond that it will be anyone’s guess and not a numerical constant of the universe.

Additionally, right now I don’t have any plans to post Potty-training Telemetry. It’s my current opinion that potty-training is an art (and it seems to vary greatly by child.) We first introduced Trixie to a little, baby potty back at 10 months. Over the last 8 months, there have been tiny success stories followed by weeks/months of nothing. In short, progress has not been linear. Most of our success has been a function of correctly anticipating — without ever pushing the issue — when something might happen based on the diaper charts.

At this point Trixie still wears a diaper all the time. That’s a lesson we’ve learned about a dozen times, most recently a few weeks ago. I’m sure we’ll learn it again at some point. But she also uses the potty maybe 2 or 3 times a day. We’re almost at the point that she sometimes comes and gets us, instead of us having to ask.

When it goes well, she gets stickers — which she absolutely loves (although I think she might actually be happier if we just let her play unsupervised with the roll of toilet paper.) My new biggest fear is the look of awe and fascination in Trixie’s eyes as we flush the toilet and say bye-bye. I know I’m going to find my wallet or cell phone in there someday.

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