Ready to Come Home

Devra and I have both been away from home for 2 weeks now. It's gone by too fast on some days and dragged on others. If you are wondering where we've been and what we've been up to, head on over to momroadtrip and check things out.

We promise to come back to all of you soon.

On The Road over at www.momroadtrip.com

Sarah, Meagan and I began our day in Chicago as guests on CBS Channel 2. By the time we pulled into Omaha 12 hours later, we found ourselves being interviewed by Action 3 News the CBS affiliate in Omaha right in the parking lot of our hotel. Later that night The Queen of Spain (AKA Erin Kotecki Vest )interviewed us on her webcast.

Stay tuned tomorrow as we'll be picking up Aviva and having a meet up in the Denver area. You can keep track of our progress as we all drive to San Francisco to attend BlogHer.

I Knew it Ten Years Ago

The front page of the Vitality section of today's Reporter Herald immediately caught my eye. The headline read Mystery illness with a caption underneath stating, "Toddler suffered from recurring fever." The article told of a child who had frequent high fevers, swollen glands around the neck and fever blisters in her mouth. Her father, an ENT, researched her symptoms on line one night and found something called Marshall syndrome or PFAPA. Since diagnosing and having his daughter treated, he has gone on to help 60 children with this ailment.

When my oldest was about 4 years old, she seemed to be sick at least once a month - high fever, sore throat, swollen glands. In the beginning, I would take her to the pediatrician only to hear those dreadful words, "It's a virus. She will just have to get over it." After a while, I stopped going to the doctor and treated her at home. I knew the drill: Leave a low grade fever alone, it fights the infection, treat the high fevers with alternating doses of ibuprofen and acetaminophen, give her popsicles for her throat, and do whatever is possible to keep her comfortable.

After about 6 months of this, I contacted an ENT to see if he had any insight. While he believed a tonsillectomy could help, he cautioned that since she had rarely been diagnosed with strep, the insurance company probably would not cover it. We decided to monitor her for a few months and see if we could diagnose enough cases to warrant the procedure. Well, 1 month later, she was so miserable that I called the insurance company to see what I could find out. I explained how my five year old was almost hospitalized for dehydration because the fever blisters in her mouth were too painful for her to want to drink. I told them that no one was really sure what the illness was and various antibiotics had done little more than let us know she is allergic to septra. To my surprise, the woman was very helpful! She said if the doctor thought it would help, they would cover it even though she did not have a history of diagnosed strep.

Within a week, she was in and out of the hospital. Ever since then, she has suffered from little more than a very infrequent cold. Up until this year that is... This year she seems to have been sick more often than healthy - nothing as awful as when she was little, just annoying colds and sore throats that won't leave her alone for very long. I keep hoping it's just her body adjusting to less sleep - she loves her sleep and a more challenging school work load meant longer study hours this last school year. After reading this article though, I will keep a closer watch for the next few months. You see, it indicated at the end that children with this mysterious illness may have a hypersensitive immune system.

Ten years ago, I knew my daughter didn't just have a virus she would get over and now her body may be trying to tell us all something else. My daughter and I will follow our instincts to make sure everything is OK. After all, who knows us better than we do?

Google? More like Boogle. C'mon, it's not really hard to search for an answer regarding affordable day care for your employees. Or is it?

Since when did on-site childcare become an equivalent benefit to bottled water and M & M's? Why don't you ask Google that question. They just got put in the hot seat by my hometown paper: On Day Care, Google Makes a Rare Fumble.

Sadly we are all too familiar with supposedly "family friendly" companies getting revealed as neither. Here at Parentopia we are totally in agreement that carework-not just parents take care of others so let's be inclusive- must be safe, affordable, available and included for ALL employees.

If you really want to read in-depth and researched reveals on companies who claim to be all about carework benefits, go read our blogmiga Becky over at http://www.deepmuckbigrake.com/ . You may have to hunt around a bit, but most of them are under the tag "Working Mother". Becky is taking on Working Mother Magazine's Top 100 list, one company at a time to see if they really hold up to a magnifying glass or not regarding their offerings to employees. Oh maybe she will add The Working Mother Magazine 20 Best Companies for Multicultural Women (notice that it's not "mothers") to that list to see how those hold up too.

But for now we need to figure out how help Google, and other companies, search for better solutions than the ones they are coming up with on their own. The frustration is employees often come up with innovative ideas and then are told, "No, that won't work." Hardly a way to run a business. Yo.

We're baaaack and then we'll be on the road, but we're taking you with us!

Our offline lives have been insane, but we know there are plenty of other parents in the same situation; Trying to get kids situated for the summer while also figuring out how to keep up with the change in structure for the next few weeks as we go from school schedules to summer plans, summer work schedules, vacations, whatevah. It's a lot of transition for a few short weeks. For the kids, we know it seems like summer lasts forever. For parents? Notsomuch. It might seem more like fall is just around the corner and visions of school supply lists are dancing in our heads. Noooooooooo!

Let's not think of it! Instead let's take a road trip! Yes! Together! We are going to have cyber travel together! We're going on a major road trip and if you are on the way? We want to meet you! If you aren't on our route? We want you to follow us online as we drive across country with:

GoonSquad Sarah

Meagan Francis

and for the last 30 miles of the trip:

Jill Asher, who, in her bio, stated Devra wouldn't tolerate her longer than 30 miles, but didn't mention the reason. Jill gets car sick. Devra doesn't do barf well, she's a sympathy puker. But it's okay, Aviva said she would help if Jill hurls. It's all good.

So for the next few days we'll be getting ready for our big trip. And you can read all about it too. The journey begins on July 12 when Devra and Sarah drive to pick up Meagan in Chicago!