This should be a big week for E*Trade (NASDAQ:ETFC). Between last night's quarterly earnings report and the latest E*Trade Baby ad installment during this weekend's Super Bowl game, the discount broker will be making news.

Spoiler alert: From the outtakes the company posted on Google's YouTube last week, I can tell you that the baby is now a little older, and joined by a few of his friends. Looking over last night's report, the same can be said about E*Trade itself: It’s a little older, a little wiser, and setting up play dates with far more of its pals.

Once you get past the reality that E*Trade is still not profitable, it's easy to warm up to the company's performance. Daily average revenue trades clocked in at 216,000, an 18% sequential upgrade. The company closed out the fourth quarter with 4.5 million retail customer accounts, adding 97,000 net new accounts (most of them on the brokerage side).

Shaky market? Well, E*Trade wrapped up the final three months of 2008 with $3.5 billion in net asset inflows.

Yes, E*Trade's stock is in the gutter. Yes, the company is in active consideration to follow banking fatcats Bank of America (NYSE:BAC) and Citigroup (NYSE:C) by cracking open the TARP piggy bank. I didn't say that there wouldn't be any teething pains. However, the company has spent the past year deleveraging its balance sheet and pocketing some serious coin by selling non-core assets, and it's coming off its strongest period of organic growth in five years.

E*Trade has a long way to go before it follows in the profitable footsteps of rivals TD*AMERITRADE (NASDAQ:AMTD) and Charles Schwab (NASDAQ:SCHW). But it's clearly taking steps in the right direction, distancing itself from its near-collapse and strengthening with every passing quarter.

Here's hoping both E*Trade and its pint-sized mascot keep growing.