The Trixie Update

This week is going to be a slow one. There were some story ideas for the site, but that was before we went to sleep last night. Since that time my brain has shut down thanks to Trixie’s horrible sleep regression which kicked in full force about 3:30am this morning and has continued to unfold throughout the day in all its destructive glory.

The question on everyone’s mind is, of course: “Why are babies so evil?” The runner-up would be: “What’s making her wake up in the middle of the night?”

I would need more sleep to do justice to either of these questions, but I can say that I don’t see any teeth yet. As much as I would like to blame something, namely teething, maybe society, I just don’t see it.

I just hope this is an anomaly, or better yet, a bad dream.

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Trixie has been babbling deh/da/dah variations for the past 4-6 weeks. Now, before anyone gets excited, I don’t believe “deh-deh” means anything in her world. For one thing she doesn’t distinguish between me or the empty cardboard box on the floor. Oftentimes, I’m the “da-da” of last resort after all the inanimate objects in the apartment fail to respond. Just to be clear, Jennifer is also “dah-dah”.

Trixie is obviously not learning or associating the names of any particular object. Namely because we never referred to me as “Da-Da” before she started up with this. I was attempting to get her to call me “Benmac” and her mother either “Doc” or “Hey Lady!”

Furthermore, if she were vocalizing based on her language exposure as opposed to a natural evolution of pronounceable syllables, then her vocabulary would be completely different. The first word out of her mouth would be “Trixie” since that’s pretty much every other word around here. Followed closely by “crap”, “don’t”, “eat”, “that”, “no”, “nooooo”, “stop”, “shit” and “milk.”

For now we’re stuck with “Dah-Dah” on a non-stop loop; the word has lost all meaning.

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Trixie shows no hesitation whatsoever when it comes to getting down from an elevated surface. Whether she’s on the bed (28″), the couch (18″), or the file boxes (11″) she is perfectly confident in her ability to crawl straight down the side of it - headfirst - like a squirrel.

I personally find this behavior baffling. Trixie has good eyesight. She clearly avoids obstacles when she’s crawling around on the floor. Plus, all other non-tree-climbing mammals instinctually exercise caution when on an elevated surface. Why is it different for Trixie? (Or maybe it’s all human babies - I don’t know because I only have the one.) I really don’t understand why she can crawl around a chair for example, but will also crawl straight off the bed if we aren’t there to catch her.

Anyway, whatever the reason, she’s finally beginning to get it. In the last week she has started to apply a little problem-solving to such situations. She now tries to swing her body around so she can lower/slide/drop/crash down feet-first. It’s not graceful, but it’s better than doing a face plant.

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As I have stated many times before on this site, sleep is really the only thing that new parents want. They want their baby to sleep and they want to be able to sleep themselves. And they want both to happen in big 8-10 hour chunks. (We still suffer from a sleep deficit stretching back 8 months.) In my quest to understand and try to crack Trixie’s sleep code, I introduce yet another way to quantify her sleep habits: The Sleep Probability Spectrum.

The Sleep Probability chart is simply an average of Trixie’s daily Sleep Maps for a given set of days. The averages are translated to a gray-scale spectrum. The stronger the contrast, and the larger the pattern, the more predictable her sleep habits for the time period examined. It’s designed to collapse a range of time into 10-minute increments on a 24 hour scale in order to figure out if there are any patterns developing.

The probability of Trixie being asleep at a particular time of day for the given range of days is expressed as a gray-scale value. Solid black represents a 100% probability that she was asleep. Solid white means a 100% probability that she was awake. The gray areas represent different degrees of uncertainty regarding her sleep schedule. 50% gray indicates a complete lack of schedule. It means there was an equal (or completely random) chance of her being awake or asleep.

What kind of predictive value do these Probability Spectrums have? Unfortunately not as much as I’d I hoped - or at least I haven’t figured out a way to apply them yet. But they are great for looking back at her progress over the past five months. Of course, when you start at the bottom, there’s nowhere to go but up.

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Why did the mere act of standing upright elicit such a reaction of terror in Trixie as seen in the TPOD from March 24th (photo taken March 4th?)

For Trixie, standing up that tall - even with support - was a little like being at the top of a roller coaster. It took her a while to slowly pull up that high, and once there, the view was exciting and new. But just like fairgoers poised to plummet as they ease over the top of the hill, Trixie started to freak about how she was going to get down. She would shriek and howl in terror because she was totally stuck.

The problem was that she hadn’t figured out how to release and climb down (or even release and fall) and so she had to be rescued every time.
But then — just like any good thrill-seeker — as soon as I’d help her down, she’d start climbing right back up again.

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Trixie has been pulling herself up and standing for about a month now. Maybe a little longer, I can’t remember anymore. Once she became vertically mobile — in addition to horizontally mobile — she demanded 10 times the attention. There’s been no time for written documentation. I miss the days when she would just lie on the floor like a slug. Those were good times.

Now she clambers over everything in the apartment. She grabs hold of doors, walls, corners and furniture. She’s most fond of grabbing at your pant legs to try to pull herself up, because she naturally wants to be exactly where you are. Unfortunately, she’ll also grab at your bare legs. This is an excruciating experience because her fingers are tiny, icy, little daggers. This is mostly because her hands are constantly in her mouth, therefore constantly wet, and the slobber evaporates leaving her hands cold as marble. There’s no good solution for this - even if you put gloves on her they would be soaking wet in 5 minutes. I’m looking forward to warmer weather or to her standing up on her own, whichever comes first.

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The lesson here is that you really can’t do paperwork with an infant around. She got this piece of paper in her mouth faster than you can blink. In the second it took me to grab her, she had already torn off a few pieces. I could see the scraps of paper stuck all over her tongue as I tried to scoop them out, but she was just as desperately trying to swallow them and hollering all the while. As you can see from the photo, I got a little of what I wanted and she got a little of what she wanted. I would probably call it a tie.

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There’s not going to be a lot of new posts this week. Trixie is totally regressing in her sleep habits and it’s taking a toll. The screaming is back too. Hope to catch up with the stories after I find some kind of solution.

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Without any fanfare, Trixie turned six months this past Saturday. Of course there was supposed to be fanfare, but Trixie’s newfound ability to crawl and subsequent fussiness coupled with another relentless week on call at the hospital conspired against us posting any significant stories to the site.

I didn’t really appreciate the immobile Trixie. I was anxious for her to start moving. I had visions that once she could move around she would be more independent, maybe feed herself, figure out how to head to the bathroom when necessary. Maybe even do a little swiffering. These have all proven false. She’s much more helpless now than before because she has absolutely no spatial judgement.

For example, I thought I would create an effective barrier to the kitchen by blocking off the walkway with a set of plastic file boxes. Due to the overhanging lids, there was a 2 inch gap between the boxes. Not a problem for Trixie. Best I can figure, the way her brain works is that if she can see where she wants to go (even if it’s through a tiny gap), she figures she can go ahead and crawl in that direction. Smack. Scream.

I then turned the boxes end to end to eliminate the gap through which Trixie repeatedly tries to crawl. Again, not a problem — she simply tries to clamber right over the top of the box by grabbing the edge and pulling herself to a standing position. Of course, at her age, she simply doesn’t have the ability to balance herself in a standing position and she spins and falls every time. Again crash. Again scream.

So in the end, the box barrier had to go. The new solution is to constantly reposition her in the center of the den and then go collect her after she crawls off. Luckily it only takes about 100 times to tire her out.

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All the phonetic sound clusters are gone. As are the cooing and soft noises. All Trixie does now is screech. And sometimes squeak. Somewhat unbelievably these are the noises she makes when happy. If she’s upset, it’s either screaming or crying. (Listen to a 38 second sample below in QuickTime or MP3 format.)

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