The Buerglers

This weekend we traveled to Nashville for a long weekend visit.  We were fortunate to see some of Eric's friend, some of my friends, and to reunite with college house mates for the wedding of one of our own.  We knew it was going to be a fast trip, especially with 4 hours of travel, an hour time difference and me having to work Sunday night. We had some great successes with toddler travel and a hotel stay but also some epic failures.  I'd love to share with you but I also want to learn from you. Success! Travel at nap time -  We've learned from car trips that Evie doesn't do a 4am start or a bed time travel. Nap seems to be our best shot! Bring a favorite toy - Evie has this  LeapFrog My Discovery House  that she will play with for hours. I hid it for a few days so it was like brand-new self-contained fun for easy car and hotel play.  Of course, Delany travels everywhere with us. She made for great over the seat puppet shows, too! Bring...

I can't believe it's June.  Let's talk for a moment.  May is always crazy. My family has coined the phrase "the merry merry month of May"  because in 1988 my grandmother turned 50, both my aunt and uncle graduated from college (in two different states), my aunt got married, and my mother gave birth to my sister.  This is in addition to things like, my pre-school graduation and Mother's Day. This year was the 25th anniversary of the original Merry Merry Month of May.  It did not disappoint. My grandmother turned 75, my sister turned 25, my aunt and uncle celebrated 25 years of marriage...in addition to our trip to NYC , a funeral Mass for our miscarried baby , two baby showers, the worst mother's day , a trip to the cabin and the advent of toddler tandrums.  I was supposed to have two weekends of graduation parties and an ordination Mass and party, but I skipped them. I just had to. In no particular order....our May (courtesy ...

Two weeks ago Evie had her 15 month check up which included two vaccines.  Both vaccines included common (1/3) side effects of a low grade fever, or rare but normal (1/20) side effects of a high fever. Evie was one of the lucky one-in-twenty who got a 102 fever for almost two full days..  If you recall from my Epic Thanksgiving , Evie doesn't do well with oral Tylenol.  Thankfully I had some of the other kind of Tylenol on hand.   She was miserable even with the medicine. She just laid on me for two days. Crying. Not eating. Moaning. Ugh. Breaks a mamas heart! Because she was laid up on me, she didn't really get to work out the tender spots on her leg from the shots. On the third day when she was feeling well enough to run around she was doing so with a bit of a limp.  That night she got a bit excited and tripped and fell head first on to the corner of the tv credenza . It swelled up to the size of half a ping pong ball and was bleeding ever s...

I have always been intrigued by and related to the story of the Wedding Feast at Cana. So much so that when I saw it was one of the Mass readings today , despite my child having a case of deafening screams & tandrums, I pulled myself together enough to make it to Mass.  And I am glad I did. There was nothing out of the ordinary at Mass that knocked me off my pew, but there is the little pericope "Do whatever He tells you." This line has stood out to me since college.  I went to a Marianist University. I took a class on Marianist  spirituality.  We spent an entire class session learning about and reflecting on that little nugget of Scripture. I have since taken it to heart and prayer many times. Just before Christmas, I had a post-Bible study discussion with a friend about her and her husband's financial situation and how it's been affecting their marriage. Not so much the dollar amount but the spirit of handling money.  Long story short, I...

Somewhere back in my delusional pregnancy-brain I decided that I wanted to run another half-marathon .   Ashley , Kathryn and I had been talking about the half in Nashville for about a year and finally got serious about planning the trip.   We each signed up and paid for the half-marathon.  All our talking was FINALLY becoming a reality. Then I had my baby. Then I realized how difficult it is to run with 38 K lactating chest. Then I realized my size 8W running shoes were Way Too Small. Then I came down with a 10 day viral infection that kept me from even doing my 2-3 mile walks. But we paid over $100 for this race, we already had the days off work and a free place to stay.  Eric and I decided we were going to Nashville regardless. We headed out first thing on Friday morning. I spent over two hours Friday morning at my doctor's walk-in hours, waiting on a steroid shot and prescriptions for cough medicine, antibiotics, and an inhaler. ...

I have a good sleeper.  I really can't complain, but last week's schedule threw Evie's nap "schedule" off quite a bit.  My normally easy going baby was all out of sorts. On Thursday, I put her down for her afternoon nap in her usual swaddle (yes, my 6 month old still swaddles up for nap time), top blanket, and her Glow Worm snuggled in the bumper next to her so they doze off face to face. After about 20 minutes of Evie talking herself to sleep I heard her screaming so I went in to check on her and this is what I found.  And on Friday we had a repeat. What's weird about this, is even if she's playing on the floor for hours, she doesn't roll around this much. Crazy girl :) I took my parents' advice: Don't get mad, get the camera.  

I thought that Monday's Violent Vomiting Incident  was a fluke. Never to happen again. Wrong. Wednesday, after a morning full of errands and a playgroup that ran three hours instead of one, I rushed home to feed my screaming baby only to be puked on again.  Basically take Monday and hit replay. Thanks to my own dear Mother, and the lovely Mamas on Twitter, we determined I probably over fed Evie in both situations.  She is transitioning to eating more at each feeding and eating fewer times a day.  Unfortunately neither of us knows exactly what "more" means just yet. Anyway, so this morning's adventure is slightly less gross. My sweet, smiling child woke up from her morning nap around 10:30.  I picked her up and we headed to the living room where her bottle of fresh pumped milk was waiting for her. Guzzle, Guzzle, Guzzle.  Drank it up. This time, instead of her breakfast coming up and out.  It went down and out. All over my leg. Let's j...

I should have known what my day was going to be like the second I woke up... Eric came in to our room lay Evie back down for her early morning nap and to kiss me good-bye, it was then that I realized my left breast had leaked significantly during the night.  It soaked through the nursing pad, my bra, and my shirt.  So I change my shirt and bra and immediately head to the living room to pump. I am sitting there pumping away, reading blogs and before my usual 15 minutes is up I feel a wet spot on my leg. In just a few short minutes the bottle over filled and was flowing out on to my pajama pants. Naturally, I changed my pants. I proceed about my morning, cleaning the kitchen and getting some chores done. Evie woke up and is ready for a bottle.  We snuggled in to eat and catch up on last night's television.  She was a little fussy, but not more so than she'd been the last few days with this growth spurt. She finished the bottle so I pick her up to burp her...