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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It was worth it. Even the rolling around on the floor with Ebola leaking out out of my face, clutching my stomach in agony part. Trixie loves daycare now, and the whole household is as well as we have been in several months.

I haven’t been sick the entire time. At the end of last week, things were looking much better. By Friday, I felt like eating again. By Saturday, I declared myself well. But apparently the virus was only incubating, growing stronger. On Sunday I caught it all over again, and it put me out of commission for a good 3 days. I can honestly say I’ve never been so sick in my whole life as I have the last month and a half.

Trixie, on the other hand, spent one day vomiting and basically recovered. She was cranky for a couple of days afterwards, but it’s impossible to tell whether that was because she was a recovering sicko or just stressed from the new daycare environment (or some combination of the two.) Matter of fact, there were so many adverse events during the weeks following Trixie’s entry to daycare — from vomiting to separation anxiety to a morning nap relapse — that it’s hard to get a handle on how out of whack life has been around here. Here’s a short summary to help explain the daycare* transition:

*Trixie is in part-time daycare (mornings) Monday-Friday. She started at 18 months.

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It’s my guess that if you ask any parent of a young toddler what the best time of the day is, the answer will be nap time. Previously it may have been happy hour, or when Must-See-TV starts, or that second coffee break, but that was before they had kids.

Four months ago, when Trixie was 14 months old, I could usually count on her to take a nap by about 10am, but I wasn’t real particular. If she acted tired, I would let her take a nap, even if it was 8 o’clock in the morning. As far as I was concerned, it was never too early for a nap. Not being a morning person, I needed Trixie’s first nap to shower, get dressed, and generally wake-up. If I was having a good day, I might even get a little work done, but that was usually left for the afternoon nap. She didn’t always take an afternoon nap, but it regular enough for me to believe that it existed. (See A)

Things began to change around 15 1/2 months (B). I still let Trixie go to sleep in the morning when she wanted to, but it became increasingly difficult to get her to take a second nap. We had horrible days where she took a short morning nap, and then spent the whole afternoon in a cranky, frustrated stupor, unwilling or unable to take a second one.

We wrestled with this for a month until we decided enough was enough. We decided to push her to stay up until nap time (1:00) and the payoff was immediate. (C) The following nine days were the most consistent sleep schedule Trixie ever had. Her schedule has fluctuated since then, but one the one-nap-a-day rule remains in effect.

So, now our only sleep problem is trying to get Trixie to stay in bed at bedtime. For instance, tonight it took over an hour of her jumping out of bed, running around her room in the dark, pulling out all her toys, banging into things and generally sounding like a raccoon going through the trash before we finally got her to sleep. Aside from reverting to the Pack’n'Play (which she still can’t climb out of) we don’t have a solution — unless going in there with a flashlight and banging on the garbage can lids would work.

Want to learn more about your child’s sleep patterns? Start today with Trixie Tracker sleep tracking software.

Other points of interest on this chart:
(D) First climbed out of her crib, just five days after we switched over to one nap a day.

(E) Christmas.

(F) After several weeks of successfully sleeping without the crib side, Trixie began rolling out of bed at night.

(G) Trixie was sick.

(H) Trixie wouldn’t stay in her crib when she was sick, so we switched her back to the Pack’n'Play for about a week and a half until she learned to stay in the crib again.

Thanks to dearsarah for reminding me to do this nap transition story

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

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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Trixie is finally making some real progress in the tooth department. We’re excited for a number of reasons. Like she can eat a lot better now. And she’s more dangerous, too — which is something I value highly. But the best part about getting a new tooth is getting to name it. And, too bad for Trixie, she’s stuck with these until her adult teeth come in and she can pick new ones.

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I was amazed at how fast babies grow back during the first month, and I remain amazed today. Even though that remarkable growth quickly tapered off and stabilized to a smooth curve, it’s still astounding to me.

Trixie almost tripled her birth weight over the past year. That’s not something you or I would want to attempt. (It would put me at around 550 lbs.) And she increased her height by 50%, which worked out to almost an inch per month. Who hasn’t wanted to be an inch or two taller? But 10.25″? That’s pretty crazy.

All along she has been in the 50th percentile for weight and toward the top end (80%-95%) for height. Here’s a look at the numbers:

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