The Trixie Update

On these pages we don’t normally deal with “emotions” and “feelings” unless it’s something along the lines of… Trixie is upset, and I’m feeling sick from not getting enough sleep.

However, against my better judgement, I feel compelled to address something I discovered recently. Babies screw up your emotional balance. Twice in the past week I’ve found myself completely caught off guard. First, Jenn and I went to see the movie The Incredibles. About halfway through, when the hero’s kids are in danger, I notice a stupid, panicky swelling of fear and love. From an animated movie.

A couple of days after that I was grabbing a slice of pizza and they had the movie I am Sam on the TV. I hadn’t seen this movie before and I was only in there for about 5 minutes. The scene playing was when they were in the courtroom taking away his young daughter. Everyone else is eating pizza; I’m ready to cry.

Now I don’t know if it’s the cumulative lack of sleep that’s battering down my emotional defenses, or if having a daughter has actually rewired part of my brain to respond to saccharine, family-driven events, but it’s annoying. What the hell kind of life is this? The next time I watch Beaches, what, am I going to need a box of kleenex?

This is messed up. And it’s ironic. Guys spend their whole life constructing intricate emotional defenses to the world. But these fortifications all face outward — you forget to watch out for an inside job by a 22-pound saboteur.

[Read more →]

You can now roll over the Hours Awake chart (below) to see a 5-day moving average. Thanks to FrumDad for the suggestion.

[Read more →]

Did you choose D? If so, Congratulations! You weren’t seduced by the siren song of A, B and C — all of which were designed to fool you into thinking that there’s hope and a hidden order when it comes to a toddler’s sleep habits. (This is the answer to the Trixie Update Sleep Challenge. Go see how you would have guessed.)

I was shocked when I first rendered this chart. It didn’t look anything like I expected, which is why I decided to turn it into a challenge. I was surprised because Jenn and I both thought Trixie was on a pretty good schedule. I imagined that one year of data would show clear improvement as the erratic chaos of a 4-month-old gave way to the regular overnight sleep habits of a 16-month-old. Instead, this chart shows that even though she’s sleeping through the night, her actual overnight sleep-time and nap schedule during the day isn’t stable. There’s been a small shift in the amount of awake-time per day, which is supposed to happen as your child grows, but the signal is buried in a lot of noise.

Basically, this chart shows that no matter how hard we try, it’s difficult to get Trixie on a regular, predictable schedule. We have routines — dinner, bath, reading, lights out. We put her to bed at the same time almost every night (even though she doesn’t always fall asleep at the time.) But we just can’t control what time she wakes up in the morning. And when she inexplicably wakes up at 5:30am it throws off her schedule for the rest of the day. For example, do you try to keep a cranky Trixie awake until her regular nap time? Or do you just let her go to sleep once she lays down on the floor at 9am and starts sucking her thumb? It’s a tough call. And all these little variations add up to create massive sleep cycle swings over the course of several days.

Does this chart mean that it’s hopeless to get your toddler on a good schedule? No. There are small trends over the past year, and some of the more severe spikes do correspond to specific provoking events (like a road trip or being sick). But it basically means that there’s not a clean evolution.

If you didn’t choose the right answer to the challenge, take heart. About 75% of us expected to find a more predictable, ordered chart. Or maybe about 75% of us are just hoping to get a little more sleep.

[Read more →]

This is interesting. I didn’t expect the voting to be so close. So I’m going to try to knock things loose a little. Here’s a reference chart for an adult who’s on a pretty regular sleep schedule. It might help in interpreting the toddler charts.

[Read more →]

Did you study hard for the Trixie Update Sleep Challenge? I hope so, because this is a closed book test. Yep, the Sleep Log archives are off-line until Monday. You’ll have to rely on memory, experience and gut instinct.

Here’s the challenge. There are 4 graphs below. One of these represents Trixie’s actual awake time over the last year (from about age 3.5 months to 15.5 months). The rest were made with fake and intentionally misleading data. What we’re looking for here is the total awake time for each day. Doesn’t matter whether the day was broken up with naps or not. Just the total awake time.

To put this in context imagine what your own chart might look like. For example, I usually only get about 6-7 hours of sleep a night. So my chart would be a fairly straight line that bounced between 17 and 18 hours, and would look much nicer than most of the choices below.

So, ready to go? Pick out the real one and vote your answer (poll is to your left under Latest TTU Comments). Come back Monday to see if you got it right.

Update [Fri. 11pm]: Want a hint? Come back Saturday.

[Read more →]

Can you believe that we’ve almost collected a whole year of sleep data? That’s right. Sleep Telemetry came online November 23rd, 2003. And now we want to see how close you’ve been paying attention. Come back tomorrow to take the Trixie Update Sleep Challenge.

[Read more →]

At the suggestion of a reader a couple of weeks back (sorry, I forgot who had the good idea) I’ve added a permanent open thread to the Sleep Log. If you have a question about Trixie’s sleep telemetry or sleep related questions in general, this is the place to post it. For example, Q: Why was she up at midnight and 4:30 in the morning last night? A: I have no idea.

You can post comments to this story directly, and — once it rolls off the front page — you can use the new link in Trixie Telemetry called “Comments” which will pop open the comments for this post.

[Read more →]

Even though she’s pretty good about handing them to me, I can tell you right now that if we ever have to take Trixie to the hospital because she’s choking on/swallowed something, I guarantee what will show up on the X-ray.

[Read more →]

Trixie’s hair is getting a little out of control. We’ve never cut it and the darn stuff just keeps on growing. Normally I wouldn’t care, but it’s gotten to the point that, I swear, I think she’s running into stuff because she can’t see.

The quick fix is the barrette. It doesn’t take long to master hair barretting. I learned it in a few short weeks. There’s always the fear that you’re going to slice right into the scalp with that thin sliver of metal, but it rarely happens. Now I can barrette her in seconds, with little to no blood loss.

Trixie’s take on barretting is negative bordering on curious. In the beginning, there was no chance it was going to stay in her hair. 15 seconds was a record. Now she’s used to it and it might stay in for hours. However, she always eventually discovers the barrette. Her expression, as she slowly pulls it from her hair and hands the alien artifact to me, is one of perplexed horror. It’s the same look you or I would have upon discovering a Matrix-like socket buried in our skull.

So we’re thinking about making everybody’s life simpler by whipping out the scissors. Nothing too serious — just the bangs. What do you guys think? Help choose the future of Trixie’s hair in our latest poll (to your left under Latest TTU Comments).

[Read more →]

The news service gods look favorably upon us today. The Trixie Update is mentioned in a Scripps Howard News Service baby blogging story which feeds various newspapers across the country. I’m pretty excited and would like to thank Jessica Wehrman for the interview. I know that the story appears in the Raleigh, NC News & Observer and the Fresno, CA Fresno Bee. If you saw the story somewhere else, I’d love to hear where. thanks-

Here’s a little more:

[Read more →]