Z has been sick with a stomach bug off and on for days now. I think we're finally seeing the end of it, as she joyfully smacked on Gatorade and apple-juice popsicles and saltines all day and ate half a bagel for dinner.

I spent Thursday and Monday at home with her while she got through it, and in retrospect, although we have been playing preschool games like fiends in preparation for a battery of game reviews we'll run over the next few weeks, there are basically two things that got us through this illness with our sanity intact. A title check is all you need to ascertain them.

We routinely have visiting tree frogs in two locations in our home. One is the window of our "spare" bathroom, where we leave a light on through the night so that Z could find her way to go potty if she had such a desire, and which also lights her way on the rare occasions she quietly gets up and makes her way to our room. The other is a picture window looking out on a small, semi-enclosed planting area of our yard, which serves as an odd microclimate, both in terms of humidity and warmth, being surrounded closely on three sides by the walls of our house. Living outside of the city limits, I have seen a full twelve inches of a retreating snake, an inquisitive forty-pound raccoon, praying mantises, birds, and, as summer turns to fall, tree frogs.

Sightings are so regular that they have inspired in Z a series of routine tree frog checks of both locations - in the morning, when one is frequently spotted snoozing on the underside of the broad, verdant leaves of some rarely-flowering bulb, and again in the evening, when there is usually an underbelly suctioned to the outside of the bathroom window, drawn to the insects who are drawn to the light.

For a few crucial days during Z's sickness, not one but two tree frogs enacted an uninterrupted amphibious display within inches of the picture window. To call it a vigil would be not only romantic and anthropomorphic but insufficiently odd. It was more of a performance art piece, with the frogs taking on the role of double-thumb-sized, slightly pulsating stones. They did nothing but sit, occasionally moved but never moving, and never traveling far enough for a three-year-old desperate for entertainment to lose track of their whereabouts. They maintained a distance from one another that ranged from four inches to two feet, but never once acknowledged each other's presence in any humanly appreciable way. In short, they did what a very sick child does, and they made it look perfectly acceptable.



The first one should be easy to spot; it's at the top of the frame. The second is better camouflaged, or more distorted by the photo's angle; it's at the bottom, two thirds of the way over from the left. These two frogs were an endless source of wonder, of conversation, and of tasks to be worked into our days. Frog gods, we thank you.

The second source of amusement that filled our best hours was a new toy. I am a Geotrax junkie of the most pathetic kind, the kind that never has sufficient funding for a good, solid fix, that won't rush out and blow a wad of cash to buy the latest coolest five new Geotrax items. It's a toy that breeds that kind of behavior, if you're into revolutionary toddler toys, and that's just what we'd claim an electric train for two-year-olds is, thank you very much, so exhibiting this kind of restraint makes you feel like more of an outsider than anything else, hanging back while the cool kids have all the fun.

But I am the kind of parent who will break down and give my sick daughter one of her Christmas presents early, just to help pass a few difficult days and see a smile on her face. We had bought her one of the second-generation Geotrax engines, the kind with a reverse gear, and I must say, it is a real piece of work.

It's rare to see a toy developers with such a comfortable position in the market thinking so intelligently about what to do next, but the second generation of Geotrax trains has as much freshness as the first did when it was first introduced. The reverse gear, for one, makes all kinds of track layouts that were sub-par (as are many achievable track layouts for those unwilling to get spendy on extra track pieces) suddenly filled with adventure, and makes operating two trains on the same track make far more logistical sense. And then there's the people, or, in Fisher-Price speak, the articulated figures.


I was unsure of the feature's value prior to experiencing it with Z, but I now feel that outfitting Geotrax trains with human figures renders the previous version of the trains, which lack any hatched compartments or characters to ride in them, almost entirely obsolete. For the target age range of Geotrax (two to five or so), this feature is so essential for attachment and creative play, particularly for toddler and preschool girls, that its absence feels almost inexcusable. The lumberjackish Will, who bends at the waist to crouch at roughly half an inch in height, can now make idle chit-chat with Z's bunnies and tiny stuffed friends, and if he's lucky, they'll let him drive once in a while.



There are several trains available in the new Geotrax lineup, each emphasizing a different utilitarian service. I picked the Alpine model because it seemed the most open-ended, and I liked the styling. I'll be heading back to the toy aisles before long to check out the others. Of course, what I'd really like to get Z now would be the new Grand Central Station. Fisher-Price has a clever way of abruptly discontinuing popular components of the Geotrax line, causing the value of its best designs to double or even triple in value in the short term thanks to its passionate user base. So really, the only responsible thing to do is to buy that new station now...

At least the frogs are free.

This post from the ZRecs Archives was originally published on November 13, 2006.