The Trixie Update

As most readers know, The Trixie Update isn’t as prolific as it used to be. This time last year we were a spry, young blog with lots of energy and boundless enthusiasm. Here we are a year later, which is about 29 years in internet time, and blogsteoporosis has set in. It’s hard to remember how we got here.

When Trixie was a few weeks old, we posted a few pictures, and a couple of stories about the miseries of sleep deprivation. At three months we had Telemetry up and running, and stories started rolling off the assembly line. At six months, we had collected so much data, the stories were writing themselves. That was our golden age.

By 12 months, having blown through a year of milk, we turned off Bottle Telemetry. By 18 months, Diaper Telemetry was discontinued. Here at 2 years all we have left is Sleep. It’s going to shut down some day too, but not yet. And until it does, we will dutifully present the data we have collected on the ever improving sleep habits of a 2-year human child.

The chart on the left right details 4,388 points of sleep data collected over the last 616 days. I wish I had data for the first few months, because that’s where the real painful stuff happened, but when it comes to raising children you just have to do the best you can and hope they turn out all right.

Sleep data is not enough to keep The Trixie Update running forever. But that’s where TPOD’s come in. I’m also still hoping to post more once Trixie Tracker launches. Thanks for sticking with us for almost two years!

Update: Want to create sleep charts for your baby or toddler?

Now you can! Give Trixie Tracker a try and discover your own amazing sleep patterns.

Some of the house favorites from the last 2 years:

The Cheerio Syndrome

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What do you think about…

Mealtime Atlas (images)

We’re all Mammals (images)

Still Mammals

Teeth (images)

Clik. clik. clik-click… clik

Paper Shredder (images)

And you thought metric was hard

Beware Toddlers Bearing Gifts

Two Nap Minimum (images)

Want more charts? Visit Metrics.

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How many times have you gotten your foot stuck in the toilet? If you’re like me — a responsible adult — the answer is probably no more than 1-2 times a year. In contrast, Trixie manages to do it about once a week.

This stems from her unbelievable sense of independence. She absolutely refuses to accept any help from either of us for anything, except of course, when she wants to be to picked up. Apparently she still requires our help on that one.

Because of this independent streak, the toilet situation is getting pretty frustrating. She has to pull down the potty seat herself, open the toilet herself, place the seat up herself. You get the picture. Heaven forbid we try to simply turn on the light so she can see what she’s doing — she’ll start screaming,”mNO, mNooooo!!!!!!!” and collapse into a sobbing mess.

She also insists on climbing up on the potty seat herself. The potty seat isn’t a super tight fit, and there’s a lot of shifting. It’s like a cross between a cat trying to drink out of the toilet and a gymnast working on the pommel horse. Usually Trixie can get a 9.1 or 9.2. But when one foot slips in the bowl, you have to deduct points.

The good news? The dismount is a lot easier. She sticks every landing.

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This morning I was prodding Trixie to stop playing with her markers and hurry up and put her shoes on, when she gave me an offhanded “Justa minnnet”.

I was like, what the hell? Where did you learn that? The answer, of course, is from everyone, everywhere. And unless the phrase or word is extremely specific, it’s next to impossible to pin down exactly where or at what point she picked up a particular piece of language.

This process is absolutely amazing to watch. And it’s actually one of those things that you do notice despite the fact that the change is incremental. It’s not like watching hair grow. You can see enormous advances over a single weekend as she acquires a new word, associates it with an object or action and then assembles it into a clunky, stilted verbal expression of what’s going on in her head.

Case in point: we beg her to go back to bed when she wakes up before 7am. A couple of days ago, she turned the tables on us. When I helped her back into her bed at 6:30 in the morning, she turned and pointed at me, “Go ta bed. Daddy. Now.” She knows that I badly want to go back to bed, but her articulation of that knowledge is so raw and straightforward that you can’t help but think that her brain is using brute force to string the words together in any way possible to get the point across.

She’s also learning new words at a record pace. On a whim I taught her the word “issues”. And I taught her to go poke at Mommy while chanting it. I stand at a safe distance and deny everything. She’s my secret language weapon and can never be turned against me. She’s going to be a hit at parties.

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