Trixie Update 101

Ounces Fed and Wasted per Week 'We're all Mammals', Jun 2004

Hours Awake per Day for One Year 'The Answer isn't Pretty', Nov 2004

Feeding Trixie: A History of Milk 'Milk Week', Oct 2003

The Daily Feeding Cycle 'What do a Newborn's Feeding Habits Look Like?', Sept 2003

Distribution of Sleep 'The Good, the Bad and the In-between', Jan 2004

The Diminishing Diaper Hassle 'The Big Five-Oh-Oh', Sept 2003

Evolution of Sleep Probability 'Any chance it's time for a nap?', Mar 2004

A Visual Representation of a Human Infant's Sleep Cycle 'Sleep Cartography', Jan 2004

A Few Trixie Update Highlights
If you like data and you like babies, you'll want to visit Metrics. If you like data and don't like babies, you'll definitely want to visit Metrics because then you'll feel even better about your anti-baby ideology. Any story that contains numbers can be found here. Some of these also contain charts and graphs. A few are highlighted in the right hand column, or visit Metrics to see them all.

A reader favorite is Milk Week. Did you ever pump? Or were you in charge of bottle feedings? You'll enjoy looking back on our History of Milk. Planning to pump? Don't be scared. It will work out.

The Trixie Picture of the Day (TPOD) is a pretty reliable weekday feature. Look for the "One Year Ago Today" feature that let's you see how much Trixie has grown (if there's an older photo available for that date.) There is also a calendar view where you can see a month's worth of TPODs at a time. TPODs are shot with a Canon Powershot S45.

The full records for Sleep Telemetry are available in Trixie Telemetry at the top of the home page. Click on "Full Log" and you'll be able to see over a year's worth of raw sleep data. There are also various stories where I look at different aspects of this data in our Sleep archive.

When the topic turns to illness or disease, some readers may refer to a condition called BIDS. It stands for Baby-related Immune Deficiency Syndrome. BIDS was coined by Schaff, a longtime Trixie Update reader and friend, to describe the increased frequency of sickness in Jenn and me since Trixie was born. Read more about BIDS and see if you suffer from it.

Other acronyms used on the site are:
TPOD: Trixie Picture of the Day.
TTU: The Trixie Update. (The wisdom of including the word 'the' in an acronym is debatable, but at this point it seems to be a done deal. Sorry.)

Publishing Schedule
If you're visiting for the first time, I (probably) know what you're thinking. I know because over the past year I've seen the issue raised in hundreds of blogs, message boards and forums. It's some variation of, "How does he have time to do that?" or even better, "He should really spend more time with his daughter."

The answer to this question is that is doesn't take a lot of time to maintain the site. It did take some effort in the beginning, but that's back when I still had a lot of energy. (There's no way I would start a site like this from scratch now.) The Trixie Telemetry section at the top of the homepage only takes a couple of seconds to update whether it's recording a diaper or marking Trixie as waking up from a nap. The whole thing is automated and takes next to no effort.

The rest of the site is another story, and so here's a rough publishing schedule. Basically, the less effort something takes, the more often it happens:

Readers also add a lot to this site. There are thousands of insightful, humorous and heartfelt comments scattered throughout the these pages. If you comment on a story -- no matter how old the story is -- your comment shows up on the home page for everyone to see. I read all comments and try to respond to those that ask a direct question. I'll also often just throw my two cents in. If you posted a funny comment and I didn't respond, it probably means that it's perfect, and I can't add anything to it.

A Few Trixie Update Technical Issues
Have a question or comment and you need to contact us? Please read the Contact Us page before you send an email.

Have a question or comment that you want to post on the site? If it's related to a story, please post it in that story's comments. If it's related to Trixie's daily Sleep Telemetry, click on "Comments" next to Sleep in Trixie Telemetry. If it's a general question, you can post it in the comments of "Frequently Asked Questions".

If you are yourself a blogger, you probably notice that there is a lot of custom stuff taking place on this site. We use Movable Type and have added a bunch of PHP-based enhancements. Some of these enhancements are available for your use. Specifically, the TPOD templates were generously documented by a reader. You can also see the code source that counts Trixie's age. Read more about and download the code here.