I almost didn't make it home

My recent travels have been so problem-free that I was due for a bad trip.

I left my conference early yesterday to stand by for an earlier flight, in hopes of making it home in time to put Littles to bed. I arrived at the airport at 11 AM and found out that the 8:35 AM flight was delayed till 2 PM. I knew that would make standby difficult, since presumably everyone on that flight was trying to get on to another flight.

Sure enough, the 12:55 PM and 1:55 PM flights went off completely full, with no standbys clearing.

Fine. I had a confirmed seat on the 3:40 PM flight, which would still get me home around 9ish, plenty of time to relax with Hubby before bedtime and then see Littles off to school the next morning.

At around 3:30 PM, the gate agent announced that there was a mechanical problem and they were investigating. Maybe 15 minutes later, she informed us that the plane was going out of service and the flight was cancelled.

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!

The 8:35 AM flight had also just been cancelled, so rather than go to the ticket counter and deal with the madness of two full flights attempting to get rebooked, I just called customer service. Initially, the representative tried to grab a seat on a nonstop US Airways flight later that evening, but she came back and told me, "I'm sorry, that US Airways flight is now sold out. The best I can do is a confirmed seat on our 6 AM flight tomorrow morning, arriving at 10:43 AM."

Pre-Littles, I would've happily grabbed a cab back to the strip and enjoyed an extra evening in Vegas on someone else's dime.

Instead, having gone from "I might see Littles tonight" to "I won't see Littles tomorrow morning" in the space of a few hours (and having way too many pregnancy hormones coursing through my body), I just broke down in tears in the middle of the airport.

I decided to go to the ticket counter to see what they could do. My hope was that I could get on a flight to the west coast (Los Angeles, San Francisco, or Seattle), because then I knew there were red-eyes that could get me home by 6 AM or thereabouts -- it would be a long night, but I'd be able to see Littles in the morning.

The line at the ticket counter was long and was not moving, so I called customer service back to see if anything had changed. The representative went to look at the same nonstop US Airways flight that the first one had inquired into, and I patiently waited on hold, knowing that the answer would be "Oops, nope, it's sold out."

I was shocked when she came back to tell me that she had found a seat for me! I didn't believe it until I physically walked over to the US Airways ticket counter and got my boarding pass.

I got home shortly after midnight last night. Bless that agent. Bless her, bless her, bless her.

When I walked in the door, Hubby told me that I might want to check on Littles, as she was grunting a few minutes earlier and might have pooped in her sleep. Sure enough, she had. I've never been so happy to change a poopy diaper :) Hey, it bought me a few sleepy minutes with my little girl.

We were late to school this morning because I was having so much fun playing and just being with her. It is good to be home.

Why I'm glad I'm going home today!

Even if hotel room service is more relaxing than Littles' version, I must admit that I treasure those few extra moments that I get with her on her "room service" nights.

It's nice to have time in the morning to shower and blow-dry my hair, but I prefer having time to hear what Littles has to say over breakfast.

While watching the beautiful sunrise over Vegas yesterday morning, I was reminded of a Lone Star song:
"I've traveled here and everywhere,
Following my job.
I've seen the paintings from the air,
Brushed by the hand of God.
The mountains and the canyons reach
From sea to shining sea
But I can't wait to get back home
To the one He made for me.
'Cause everywhere I'll ever go
And everywhere I've been,
Nothing takes my breath away
Like my front porch looking in..."

And I can't wait to get back home to Hubby and Littles tonight! It's always the best part of traveling :)

Why I'm glad I'm traveling today, Wednesday edition

The view of the sunrise over Vegas from my hotel room this morning was beautiful.

Why I'm glad I'm traveling today, Tuesday edition

Getting ready this morning took less than an hour, including a shower and blow-drying my hair, and it did not involve changing any diapers!

Why I'm glad I'm traveling today, Monday edition

Today marks the beginning of a one-month stretch where I have three business trips. Three! Ugh.

Even the fact that this week's trip is to Las Vegas doesn't help. I'm not a real fan of Vegas anyway -- a city built around drinking and gambling is not much fun for a pregnant woman who doesn't gamble. And I was just here with Hubby for a vacation (our first one ever without Littles) about two months ago, so everything I see here reminds me of him and makes me miss him even more than usual.

But it is what it is, so I might as well look on the positive side by starting a new series called "why I'm glad I'm traveling today."

So why am I glad I'm traveling today? I just enjoyed a lovely room service dinner, where I ordered exactly what I wanted (no debating over what would work best for sharing with a picky two-year-old) and did not hear a single "I don't want it!" "Want more milk!" "Want a spoon!" "No, want a little spoon!" "I'm all done! All done! ALL DONNNNNNNNNNNE!"

Meanwhile, I was on instant messenger with Hubby, who was having his own "room service" experience. That's what we jokingly call it when Littles tries to stall on going to bed by making fifty zillion requests over the video monitor. "I want water!" "I want my Cinderella!" "Yucky water!" "I want monkey!" "I need to go potty!"

I will say, my version of room service was a little more relaxing :) So that is why I am glad I am traveling today.

Childhood vaccines and the working mom

I have a very long post on vaccinations brewing in my head. So before I get into all that, I thought I'd give some background on where I'm coming from with regards to vaccinations.

Littles was fully vaccinated through two months of age. She received:

• First full day of life: Hepatitis B vaccine
• 4 weeks of age: Another Hepatitis B vaccine
• 2 months of age: diphtheria-tetanus-acellular pertussis (DTaP), inactivated polio (IPV), pneumococcal conjugate (PCV), Hib, and the oral rotavirus vaccine

The two Hepatitis B vaccines weren't too bad, but the week or so after her 2-month shots was awful. It's hard to explain. There was nothing "wrong," nothing where I could take her to the doctor and say, "What is going on with this?" The best way I can explain it is that she just wasn't my baby. Normally easygoing and happy, she was really fussy and out of it. She would pull off when nursing and just scream like she was in pain. It was awful.

Luckily, she came through it. But between her 2 month and 4 month checkups, I started doing more research on vaccinations. To make a very long story short, Littles did not receive any more vaccines until she was 16 months old.

Since then, we've been vaccinating on a delayed schedule. Littles gets two vaccines at every checkup. Hubby and I sometimes have preferences as to which ones she should get, our doctor gives us her two cents, and then we decide together what to do. At this point, she's only missing three shots, although those will probably get delayed a little longer than usual to squeeze in her seasonal and swine flu vaccines (highly recommended by our doctor this season, due to my pregnancy).

I was a little nervous when we started vaccinating again, but the difference between getting 5 vaccines at 2 months of age and getting 2 vaccines at 16 months of age is... well, huge. The worst that has happened is that Littles has had some bad leg pain on the night after receiving the vaccines. But even through that, she was still my baby. Thank goodness.

Hubby and I haven't discussed what we'll do with regards to vaccinating Noob. Honestly, I'm not sure that waiting until 16 months to resume vaccinating Littles was a good idea, so I lean towards starting earlier with Noob. But I do still want to space them out -- I don't want Noob ever getting five vaccines in one day.

To bring this post back to the working-mom theme of this blog, one common misconception I see is that unvaccinated/partially vaccinated kids cannot attend daycare -- obviously, a huge issue for working moms. This is not always the case.

Nearly half the states allow philosophical exemptions to vaccinations. Here in Texas, that meant that in order to enroll Littles in preschool, we had to fill out a state-provided form indicating which vaccines we do not want her to receive, get it notarized, and submit that to the preschool along with her (obviously incomplete) vaccination record. Part of the deal is that if there is an outbreak of a disease that she's not vaccinated for, she may not be permitted to attend preschool until the outbreak is over. We'll take that chance, thanks.

If you're not in a philosophical-exemption state, all other states provide a medical exemption for school enrollment, and all but two states (Mississippi and West Virginia) provide a religious exemption. From what I've heard, both of these exemptions are much harder to obtain than a philosophical exemption, but it is something to look into if you feel very strongly about avoiding or delaying vaccination.

I have much more to say on this topic, but I'll leave it at that for now. The bottom line is that I do believe in vaccination in general. (If I didn't, then I never would have agreed to resuming vaccinating with Littles.) I'm just not happy with the way it's implemented in the USA today, for a variety of reasons.