staying on track

At 3:00 in the afternoon today, on Wednesday, I'm waking up from a 90 minute nap, and Adam has been asleep for 40 minutes. I'm estimating that Lydia has been asleep for 30 minutes. Some of you reading might be thinking, "so what?" If you've ever had a newborn at home, your reaction might be, "how does he have any idea what day of the week it is, let alone how long his nap was, and when his son and wife fell asleep??"


Enter Trixie Tracker. This website allows you to keep tabs on your child's "telemetry:" how often he feeds, how many diapers he has, when he sleeps, and more for older children. It was developed by a stay-at-home Dad whose medical resident-wife wanted to be able to see how her newborn daughter was doing from work. He really expanded it to be a full fledged web application tracking all sorts of statistics. And it's not complex. For most entries, you just click a button and "boom," it updates the time and all the characteristics.

I know by now, you're probably thinking several things, including "geek," "how anal retentive," etc. It's already saved our brains several times in the hospital... when the nurse asked, "how many diapers this evening?" instead of "uh..." I clicked a button and said, "poopy at 4:54 and poopy at 11:53." And when I woke up from my nap to my wife and son asleep, I didn't have to wonder, "gee... should I wake them up?" I just checked the site.^*

Tomorrow, we take Adam to the pediatrician for the first time, and I'm bringing a printout of his stats. I'm sure she'll either be thrilled or mortified.

^*Okay, I cheated on knowing how long Lydia was asleep. The Tivo was 30 minutes into a program!