Blog Death

It's hard to say what killed my blog. It was just a combination of a bunch of little factors, that added up to a slow but eventual death. The main factor is of course time. Blogging takes time that 9 times out of 10, I'd rather be spending doing something else. Granted, usually that is just World of Warcraft, but that's not the only thing...

Megan has become a bigger focus of my evenings lately, from spending time with her when I get home from work right away, to putting her to bed on time every night. (around 10pm) Each night, I spend a good 30 minutes with her putting her to bed. It's worked out well, and in general most nights are much better. Take tonight for example, she went to sleep without the slightest complaint.

The other main thing that killed my blog, is when all my posts became nothing more then a series of complaints. What the hell do I have to complain about? I'm healthy, I have a great job, a wife that loves me and a daughter I just adore. My insistence of focusing on the few negative things here and there started to just bother me. And blogging about it even made things worse.

So what next? Is my blog really dead? It's hard to say. With November already over and the New Year right around the corner, thoughts of new goals and resolutions come right along with it. What do I want to focus on in 2008? Where do I want to spend my time? Where are my priorities? And most important of all, do I want to share my crazy struggle to find the answers to all these questions again and again on my blog? I suppose only time will tell.

Week from hell

Ugh! Week between posts. Maybe it's time to throw in the towel on this silly blog business. I'm so good at quitting! Might as well embrace the things I'm good at...

I honestly don't know what is stressing me out more right now - Megan's bed time issues or work. The problem is that they both compound each other into this really bad cycle. Megan keeps me awake until 1am. This causes me to be tired and negative at work all day. This results in me stress eating and/or being too tired to work out after work. Of course that puts me in an even worse mood followed up by another late night with Megan.

I just want to survive the week. Tomorrow is Friday, and it should go somewhat easier then the rest of the days this week. Then a short 3 day weekend to Thanksgiving break. Just... need... to survive.

Mid week was a nice visit with the family, it was my sister in laws birthday. We went out to Red Robin and Megan was decently behaved. She ate all of her pizza and for the most part stayed in her little area. Made for a pleasant evening. Wish I could see my brother more but with his work and school schedule these days, we don't have a lot of overlapping free time.

This weekend we are going down to New Ulm to get a night off. It's sort of our standard thing now, we go down, drop Megan off with the grandparents, and then enjoy a small break. Going to try and milk it for all it's worth and de-stress as much as possible. I'm sure that will involve a little bit of drinking as well.

Bed Progress

Overall I would say the transition from the crib is going well. Megan has been hit and miss with actually going to bed on her own so far. At least one nap time and one evening night time, she climbed into her bed all on her own for sleep. Other times we've put her in and she has climbed out. One night I fought with her for a good hour until she finally just collapsed in exhaustion and slept.

Although she stayed in the bed over night a few times, the last few nights she has either fallen out or climbed out. I've kept the baby monitor on over night so she isn't crying or anything, just falling out. But once I saw her like this... I realized we should probably do something about it.



So tonight I stopped off at Baby Depot and bought some bed rails. I think this should take care of the problem, although she might be weirded out by them at first.



The other big challenge we are facing is Megan's insistence on taking all her clothes AND diaper off. You take your eye off her for a minute and all of a sudden she will be running around naked. I'll go ahead and admit the worse part - when she then decides to go to the bathroom after getting naked. It's quite annoying. What advice we find online mentions tactics such as duct taping diapers and putting pajamas on backwards. Ohhh the joys of two year olds.

Bed and Bread

Bought a new bed and some bread this weekend! The bread was especially yummy, from the Harvest Bread Co. off 42. Had a coupon from a 2006 run for a free loaf that I never got around to using. Bought Megan a new bed, since she has figured out how to climb out of her crib! Not that we didn't see it coming, she might as well be a monkey with how much climbing she does. I was just surprised at how easily she can climb out without falling or hurting herself at all.



I realized I still haven't got around to posting Halloween pictures, so I'll just end my post with a bunch of pictures. Starting first with Megan and her awesome Snow White costume!



We did a little bit of Trick-or-Treating with Megan, but it was very cold and so we only did about 10 houses. Not that we didn't get enough candy... Ended up throwing most of it away, can't have that stuff in the house and not eat it!

The rest of these pictures are from my weekend in Boise. I thought I'd start with the best one first. This is "Ash" from the movie, Evil Dead and/or Army of Darkness, take your pick. It was an awesome costume that he built all by hand.



I made this guys night simply because I knew what his costume was. Could it be the 20 something generation is too young to know? Apparently no one realized he was "Brand", the older brother from the movie Goonies. Seemed pretty obvious! I heard they might be making another Goonies in the future?



Saw two Edward Scissor hands, but this one was the better costume in my opinion. The impressive part was holding a drink at the same time...



This was just a fancy costume I thought looked cool. Chesty as well...



I have more, but these were some of the better ones. Overall, there was a ton of good costumes that night. It had been a long time since I had "gone out" for a Halloween, so that just added to my enjoyment of that weekend.