Wow, how time flies when you’re having fun. It’s been nearly a month since I posted here last, and back in May I was complaining about being stuck in a stay-at-home rut. Well, I’m still at home, and I still have a 10 month old baby who is essentially a sleep vampire, but I have taken some pretty big steps to get my life back on track. Hence the radio silence.
You guys, you would believe this, but almost a decade after completing my certificate in Web Design, I am a student again. A study-from-home student, sure, but a student none the less!
Teaching An Old Dog New Tricks
My husband has been telling me that I should study for years now, but I never quite found the course that was right for me. I love writing, but after my time working for a local newspaper, I knew that traditional journalism just wasn’t for me.
A few friends suggested I go back and brush up on my web design and possibly take it to the next level and look at server based languages, but after running my own business last year, I learned that I was more concerned with what people were putting on the website rather than how it was all running behind the scenes.
Then, a few weeks ago, a promotion for a nationally accredited certificate in Professional Writing and Editing course popped up in my Facebook feed. I looked into it some more, and it ticked all of the right boxes, so I thought, ‘what the hell?’ I called up, found out information about it, juggled some money and bam! I started a few weeks ago.
Switching back in to study mode has been… interesting — most of my ‘study’ has basically consisted of me writing out the content in my notepad! — however, I’m finding that by taking the slower method, things are sinking in a lot better. (I have a bad habit of rushing things and missing crucial parts)
The biggest challenge so far would have to be a combination of finding a good chunk of time to study while not being dead tired, and trying to understand what the activity questions are asking of me. If it wasn’t for the class forums and others asking for the same clarification that I’m after, I’d probably be a wreck thinking I’m too dumb to graduate and that I’ve just wasted precious money.
Katelyn, Sleep Vampire
Baby K has been intense for the past few months. I love snuggles with her, but her clingyness went to extreme levels right around the time I wrote that last post. She started teething so we decided it was time to ditch the dummy/pacifier and everything just went to hell after that.
First she would only fall asleep on me, and then in our bed, and towards the end there, she wouldn’t even sleep then! You can imagine how frayed I was by this point; there’s no way I can sleep properly with a baby on me or in the bed next to me — I was so paranoid about dropping her or waking up to find her smothered or something.
My husband finally convinced me that we needed to get serious about sleep training and I honestly hated it with every fibre of my being. Hearing her stubborn cries would just destroy me. But, in saying that, I am glad that we stuck with it because she has improved so much.
My happy, smiley bubba is back, and now that she is napping again, the clingyness only shows up when she’s getting sleepy. Instead of fighting with us until 11.30pm +, she whines in her cot for a short while at bed time before passing out, and the best part of all is that now that she is finally in her own room, she is going longer and longer between waking. In fact, I actually had uninterrupted sleep until 4am yesterday! Bliss.
Note to self: should I have any other children (LOLNO), make sure I start proper sleep training by six months old because it will be much more pleasant for everyone!
Heroes of the Storm Hype
Since I’m finding that studying at night once the kids are in bed is a bit of a lost cause, I have been spending a fair bit of my time helping my husband out while he streams Heroes of the Storm on Twitch. The game officially launched a few weeks back — in fact, he woke me up at 3.30am local time so I could watch the London launch with him! — and he has been living and breathing HotS ever since. His public love of HotS even scored him some loot from Blizzard ANZ!
I couldn’t hide my excitement about game launch at work any longer! #heroesiscoming @BlizzHeroes @Blizzard_ANZ pic.twitter.com/wW1KkU1KX1
— Disconcur (@Disconcur) May 27, 2015
While I may spend most nights hanging out in his stream chat, I myself am struggling to get into the game. It’s my first foray into this kind of genre (I never played Warcraft II or III, don’t judge me!) and everything from the map objectives to the camera controls just baffle me. I’m getting better as time goes by, but I am still yet to be wooed by all the MOBA hype. Perhaps it’s just me not understanding all the intricacies of the game, but it feels kinda… slow? I dunno
Hearthstone Horrors
I haven’t had nearly as much time as I would like to play Hearthstone lately, but I did manage to sit down and play a few small sessions over the weekend. It was bad. So, so very bad. Getting to Rank 18 with my usual Bloodlust Shaman and Oil Rogue was struggletown, so I decided it was time to try out a new deck. I created a Mech Shaman deck similar to this one, and it’s just not working out for me. I’m having a hard time adjusting my play style from tempo to aggro and it’s having a negative impact on my games. I might make some time to stream some game play with it tomorrow night and track my win/loss ratio to see if it’s really as terrible as it feels.
TL;DR
Basically, the past month has been a blur of sleep deprived hell, but now that Katelyn is back on track I feel like perhaps I may be getting back on track. That means blogging may return to some semblance of normality, too. Hoorah! I am looking forward to catching up with all my favourites and being active in the community once again.
What exciting things have you been getting up to lately? Let’s chat about them in the comments below ![:)]()
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