The Anomaly, the Coincidence and the Trend. And Their Nasty Cousin: The Habit

It's important to know the difference. Being of a very scientific nature I believe everything (well, nearly everything...) can be broken down into one of the above categories.

Here in the lab (where I spend an inappropriate amount of my time..) we run every test three times. This eliminates any possiblility of having either an anomaly or a coincidence. You get three good runs and you've got yourself a believable number. So, let's apply that thought process to our everyday life. I'll show you how easy it is!

For example, last Friday night Colt slept from about 8:00pm until 6:30 the next morning. It was amazing. Mostly because Todd and I both had a few drinks at the Christmas party and were up WAY past our bedtime of 7:00pm. It felt so good to sleep through the night. There we have what I call an anomaly. Wikipedia defines anomaly as: An anomaly is any occurrence or object that is strange, unusual, or unique. Sleeping through the night was indeed an anomaly - very unique. We're able to tell this because Colt did NOT sleep throught the night Saturday night.

However....on Sunday night he DID sleep through the night. Because they were separated by a night of the usual wake-the-sleeping-mommy-for-a-midnight-snack-at-3am we weren't "trending" towards sleeping. We had merely hit the coincidence stage. Wikipedia defines coincidence as: Coincidence is the noteworthy alignment of two or more events or circumstances without obvious causal connection. One can't argue with the facts: we have a coincidence on our hands!!

Tuesday and Wednesday nights again up at about 3am for the usual feed-me-and-I'll-back-to-sleep routine.

However, last night he went down about 9:30 and woke this morning at 5:30 - right before my alarm clock was to go off.

PEOPLE OF THE WORLD: WE HAVE A TREND HERE.

Our baby has, at the spry age of 11 weeks, developed a sleeping trend. Three nights of sleeping through the night and we're trending!! Trending in a good way.

Now, let's address the ugly cousin of the anomaly, the coincidence and the trend: the habit. I would like to say Colt is in the habit of sleeping through the night, but let's not kid ourselves - he's not. He's still hovering around trend stage and I'm seriously hoping we'll progress to the habit stage. No, no....the habit I'm talking about here is the one I've developed where I get up at 3:00am to feed him. Because there I was: 3:00 o'clock this morning wide awake, staring at a baby sound asleep in his bassinet, smiling just a little bit because he was no doubt thinking, "I own you mom. I own you both. Welcome to MY life for the last two months. See you at 6:00am"

And the truth is he does own us. He has me trained so good. So, after I made sure he was indeed still breathing (why else would he sleep through the 3:00 feeding?) and admired just how adorable he looks while he's sleeping, I went back to bed for an hour. I think I'm more exhausted now that he's sleeping through the night than I was when I was up feeding him!!