Back when we had a nanny for Daisy, we had crafted a form for the nanny to fill out each day to give us some information about how Daisy was doing. Mostly we just wanted to know if she had napped much or pooped much so we could be on the lookout for super-cranky baby, super-poopy baby, or the dreaded super cranky poopy baby.

Now the shoe is on the other foot. Daisy has requested that I fill out a similar form during my daytime "watching" of her Tamagotchi, "Tommy". She'd like to know how many times Tommy electronically pooped, how many pixel-meals he ate, and how many virtual time-outs I gave the little bastard. You see, I'm in charge of taking care of Tommy while Daisy is in day camp.

Let me tell you how much joy this brings me. Negative one million. That's how much.

Daisy loves the little monster though. As soon as she woke up the morning after Tommy was "born", she cooed at the crappy 16x16 pixel image of him sleeping and excitedly announced, "Tommy slept through the night!". Having heard many times our tales of poor-sleeping babies, Daisy was immensely appreciative of Tommy's virtual accomplishment.

I promptly took lousy care of him the first day. I was unaware that the empty Hearts on the "Hunger" meter meant that he was famished. Consequently, I accidentally starved the bastard for the first 20 hours of his life. I couldn't understand why he was incessantly beeping at me and I punished him with a flurry of time-out presses.

Apparently if you raise them poorly they become ugly instead of cute. Now, our little bastard is fairly hideous, but Daisy still loves him. Meanwhile, my finger is poised over the Reset button in case he becomes any more annoying or unattractive. That's one advantage he has over a "real" child.

I can't wait to see what tomorrow brings. Negative two million, probably.