I staggered out of the den and ran upstairs. There, my usually calm and collected non-panicking husband was holding my youngest who was indeed having trouble breathing. I grabbed the phone and dialed 911. The operator answered quickly, got my information, and stayed on the phone with me until the police arrived.

They arrived in 3 minutes and 38 seconds. Or less, really. (I know this because I looked at my cell phone log on the way home and that was the call duration.) I waved them in and they ran upstairs to assess my little girl. The paramedics arrived soon after. The first one into the room called it: “She’s got croup.” He told us she would be okay, but that since she was having problems breathing we’d be taking a ride in the ambulance to the local hospital.

My husband grabbed my socks and sneakers. I put slippers on the baby, and we went to the hospital. I went with the baby in the rig. My husband followed in the car once my sister got to our house to stay with Big Girl. Throughout the entire process, the entire ride, all the questions and answers and during the time I held the oxygen mask over my poor sweetheart’s face, I kept praying. Hoping it was croup, while at the same time sitting there in disbelief. How could this be happening? Babies get croup. Toddlers get croup. Children who are going on four do not get croup. Not unless they’ve been getting it since they were babies or toddlers. And yet as soon as we got to the hospital the doctor made the same diagnosis as the EMT. Croup.

Once they got us in a room the doctor continued the moist oxygen treatment and gave her an oral dose of steroids. We stayed at the hospital until her breathing was stable and she could talk. (When my husband went in to check on her, he told me on the way home, he got hysterical not only because she couldn’t breathe, but because she couldn’t speak, either.)

She’s sleeping in our bed right now. My husband, who has never, ever allowed our children to sleep in our bed, was the one to suggest it. I’m exhausted so I am going to join them. But I still can’t believe it. Little Girl has croup. Thank goodness. I hope she sleeps better than I do tonight.

“Mommmm, she won’t share.”

“Little Girl, share.”

“No, it’s my turn.”(Scuffling and pushing ensues.)

“Girls, stop it. Big Girl, just let her play with it for another two seconds.”

(Said dramatically) “No, it’s my ball. Besides, I never get to play basketball because you don’t let me come outside by myself and you’re always WORKING!”

Sigh. She pulled the always working card. Sigh. She exaggerates, of course. I am not always working. Yes, I work during the week, but at least I am here at home where I can sneaks bits and bites of time with them. For example, I pick up Little Girl from school and take Big Girl off of the bus when she gets home. Then I spend a nice half hour or so with the girls between when the bus comes and the sitter gets here. I usually stop working around 6 unless I am on a heavy deadline.

Oh, and there are some days where I have no sitter. On those days I take the girls to the park or let them play upstairs together while I do something less concentration-intensive. And then there are the days when I get to be Girl Scout leader or religion teacher. I’m definitely not working then.

Still, I guess an 8-year-old might see my schedule as a busy one. As for the first part of her lament: She’s right. She’s not allowed outside alone. She’s not. Even though I can remember riding around the corner alone at her age, I don’t let either kid out of my sight for more than two seconds. Does that make me a helicopter parent? Maybe. But the alternative makes me too anxious.

I didn’t say anything to her when she said what she said. I waited until I was alone with my husband and I brought it up to him. He sees both sides, he says. But he also says I need to give my kids — at least the big one — a little more trust and freedom.

Today I took Big Girl off the bus and we didn’t event go inside. I took her backpack and told her we were hanging outside. They were so happy. The kids played ball. Big Girl had her basketball. Little Girl had a blow up globe that she got as a birthday party favor. I sat there on the stoop holding the dog’s leash. Periodically, I yelled for the little one to stay away from the street.

The whole time, though, I was thinking. How could I balance my fear of the unknown, of the worst, with wanting to give my children more freedom? Sitting there looking at their young, innocent faces I realized that I have no intention of letting the big one go outside all by herself and play on our front lawn. It’s just too scary for me. Maybe we’ll start in the back.

First, and most important caffeine is a drug. Sorry, folks, but it is. And being able to buy a bottle of flavored caffeine seems sort of dangerous. Sure, someone could down three or four cans of Red Bull or a pot of coffee, but they are going to be limited by the size of their stomach. It’s not easy to drink ounces and ounces of liquid. Not without getting a stomach ache, anyway. With MiO Energy, however, you get 60 mg of caffeine or about what you’d find in a cup of coffee in one “squirt.” But here’s the rub: It’s very easy to put three, four, or even five squirts of MiO in an eight-ounce glass of water, essentially upping your caffeine intake without adding any real bulk to your stomach. According to the company’s website, the 18 serving bottle is a mere 1.62 fluid ounces! Meaning you could drink 18 servings of caffeine very easily in a single glass of water as long as you didn’t mind the super-concentrated taste. In an uninformed consumer’s hands or even worse, a kid’s hands? Well, it could be dangerous. And it’s not just me. I recently read a Slate.com article that called for a ban of all caffeinated beverages to kids — especially in schools. From the Slate article:

According to a 2011 paper on health effects of energy drinks on children, children shouldn’t have more caffeine than 2.5 milligrams per kilogram per day; since the FDA limits 71 milligrams of caffeine per a 12-ounce can of soda, that’s about one soda a day, not a soda plus a couple of shots of MiO Energy.

Seems like kids have already gotten the message that MiO Energy is a great party drink, too. If you go to the MiO FAQ you’ll see a telling question: Can I mix MiO Energy with vodka. To Kraft’s credit, it discourages the behavior: “We strongly advise against it. MiO Energy contains caffeine and studies indicate that consuming caffeine with alcohol can lead to unsafe behaviors. Please don’t try it.”  The FAQ also cautions against giving MiO Energy to kids or mixing it into Coke.

The second problem I have with MiO was well documented in my last post about the product. Here’s what Kraft says about its ingredients: MiO is sweetened with sucralose, a calorie-free, artificial sweetener that is 600 times sweeter than sugar. To maintain color and freshness, MiO does use certain preservatives and artificial colorings. Ugh. And the Energy version also has guarana and ginseng as well as vitamins B-6 and B-12.

Finally, I have to say it: The stuff tastes like chemicals. I decided it’s not cool to bash something without actually trying it. (Besides, I got quite a few comments from readers saying the stuff was yummy.) Not sure what they were tasting, but I disagree wholeheartedly. Me? I’d rather grab a plain glass of water or, if I didn’t mind the palpitations, a cup of coffee. They are both cheaper and taste a lot better.

During the summer we got sunburned and bug-bitten and drank out of the hose when we were thirsty. In the winter we played outside until our noses were pink and our mittens were covered in mini snowballs. In short, we had a lot of fun without spending a dime. My mother, I’m sure, didn’t realize she was following the American Academy of Pediatrics recommendation to encourage children to play outside as much as possible. She didn’t know she was helping to battle childhood obesity. She just thought that kids should run and play.

A new study from the Seattle Children’s Research Institute found that — if I was a child today — my mother would be in the minority. According to the study, “nearly half of preschoolers in a sample representing four million U.S. children did not have even one parent-supervised outdoor play opportunity per day.” The study, “The frequency of parent-supervised outdoor play of U.S. preschool age children,” was published last week in the Archives of Pediatric & Adolescent Medicine.

There were a few interesting stats in the study. For instance, girls were less likely to spend time outdoors playing. Also, when kids do go outside it’s mostly mothers that are taking them. According to researchers, 44 percent of mothers report taking kids outside daily compared to only about a quarter (24 percent) of dads. Really scary: 15 percent of moms and 30 percent of dads didn’t take their kids outside even a few times per week. Kids of gym rats are luckier than the rest since their parents make outdoor play a priority. Mothers who exercised regularly (more than four times a week) were 50 percent more likely to take their child outside daily than those who never hit the gym.

One of the authors of the study, Pooja S. Tandon, M.D., wrote an excellent blog post about the research and about her own children. In the post, Resurrecting Outdoor Play Time, she explains that kids in many European countries spend three or four hours outside daily, which sounds a lot like my childhood. She also provides a few ideas to get kids outside more often. Here’s one thing she didn’t include: Don’t worry about having an activity or “something to do.” Kids, when given the chance, will find something to do.

Yesterday, while I worked my babysitter took the kids outside. The kids decided to go on a rock hunt, finding 20 different rocks in the backyard. Then they played a spy game, lurking behind trees while talking into pretend walkie talkies. Finally, they had running races, which my Big Girl won every time. I heard about it all when we were eating dinner together. (Another old fashioned habit that needs a revival!) Even though I wasn’t with them today, I know they made some memories that they will always remember. And that’s a good thing — body, mind, and soul.

We went into our first eye exam with the hopes that her eyes would be big enough to accommodate contact lenses. (Yes, the kid’s eyeball actually needs to be big enough to wear a lens.) My child has a big head and big brains and eyes to match, so we were good. The big issue, said the eye doctor, was going to be if Big Girl could touch her eye without freaking out. Good or bad, that put the success squarely in my daughter’s hands. Big Girl realized immediately that she needed to get her lens — she only needs vision correction in one of her eyes — in and out several times before she could take them home. The first tries were rough, to say the least.

Big Girl was shaking — literally. She couldn’t figure out how to keep her eye open. Once she did, she couldn’t get her finger with the lens on it close enough to her eye to get it in. We spent a good two hours at the doctor’s office before she had success, getting the lens in and out. Several times during those two hours, the woman working with Big Girl tried to get her to give up on lenses. I was fine with trying again in the future, but Big Girl was being stubborn. She was going to do it, she said. She just needed more practice. Okay, I said, we’d come back the next day to try again.

The next day was a little easier, but we still spent more than an hour at the office. Big Girl was able to get the lens in and out once or twice, but she was still shaking, and her eye was red. Again, the woman working with her we could wait six months and try again in the fall. I agreed, telling her there was no shame in waiting a while. Again, Big Girl told me no, she was going to do it. Since she still wasn’t comfortable enough with insertion and removal we set up another appointment two days later. When that morning came I was scheduled to be out on a training run, so my husband brought both girls to the eye doctor’s office. This time, I was told, Big Girl got her lens in on the first try and took it out pretty quickly, too. I got there just in time to see the smiles and hear the actual cheers all around — lots of them. She did it, and was thrilled. So was I. Big Girl was proficient enough with her lens to wear it home.

We weren’t out of the woods yet, though. The next day my husband and I had to attend a family member’s wake, so Big Girl put her lens in alone. Immediately after, we all jumped into the car, dropping Big Girl at a friend’s house while we went to a funeral home in the Bronx. A few hours later we picked her up and went to my brother’s house to celebrate his birthday. Around 6 p.m. it was time for Big Girl to take her lens out. (During the first week kids wear their lenses on a shortened schedule, adding an hour of wear every day.) She couldn’t do it, she said, after trying for more than 45 minutes. I won’t go through all the upsetting details (Big Girl crying, my mother screaming at me, the fight that ensued between me and my mother, my daughter’s extremely red eye). Instead, I’ll jump to the chase: Big Girl didn’t have a lens in her eye at all. She thought she put it in, but she didn’t. Sigh.

That night I told Big Girl she had to wait until she was nine to wear contact lenses. She was crushed, crying herself to sleep. My husband wisely intervened, telling me that by taking away her chance to try again, I was damaging her confidence. Okay, I said, we’ll try again with one rule in place: Big Girl had to let me check her eye every morning to make sure the lens was actually in there. She agreed.

That Friday we went to the eye doctor again for a re-check. We got a new trial lens — the old one dried out after she dropped it on my kitchen table — and started the process again. That was almost ten days ago. Since then Big Girl has been a contact lens whiz, putting them in and taking them out like a pro. She’s super-meticulous about washing her hands and storing her lenses. The best part is she’s bursting with new-found confidence. She is a girl on a mission. I am very impressed. Oh, and she can finally see now, which is also pretty important, right?

At first, this really bothered me. Why isn’t she making any little girlfriends, I wondered. What does this mean about her and her personality? Then I realized I was over-thinking things. Little Girl is an active, athletic, fun child who loves running around and would rather play monster than sit in a dirty sandbox. How could I have anything bad to say about that? Really, what’s the big deal? So she’s a tomboy, something that’s increasingly being found to be genetic, according to one study.

I think it will serve her well as she gets older and enters what is still a male-dominated world. My little girl, well, she already doesn’t take any crap from anyone. (Hence the scar above her eyebrow and the fact that she lost Blanka last night for biting her sister. I also think it’s a byproduct of spending a lot of time with her Daddy when she was little. Big Girl was almost exclusively with me in her very early years. My husband worked a lot, so I got to take her to music class, mommy-and-me, cooking classes, gymnastics, and playdates. My husband was out of work and sick when Little Girl was born, so he was the one charged with her care during the day. His activity of choice: Bringing Little Girl to the park and letting her run wild. There were few, if any, music classes on his agenda.

Anyway, the whole point of this post is that I think it’s important for us as parents to accept and embrace the people our children become. Because if we can’t accept them, how can they accept themselves?

Although my troop always forgoes the incentives so we can earn an extra $.05 per box, there’s still an opportunity to earn Girl Scout store gift certificates by selling 300, 600, or 900 boxes. Big Girl, who spent a little time perusing the catalog, decided she wanted to earn a $75 gift certificate. It was a tall order, I told her. Selling 300 boxes of cookies on her own would be difficult and require a lot of hard work. She said she wanted to do it, and I am so glad she did because in addition to that gift certificate, she also racked up confidence, poise, marketing know-how, and sales skills. She even overcame her shyness and got better at making eye contact, two things that have stymied her in the past.

Me, I didn’t care so much about the gift certificate or the money for the troop. I just wanted to get rid of extra cookies. My troop had a few booth sales. My cookie mom was laid up, so I was the cookie holder. If Big Girl would sell cookies, I could free up space in my trunk. Our first location was outside a local supermarket. The first sale was rough to put it mildly. Big Girl looked like she was being tortured. She wouldn’t speak up. She wouldn’t make eye contact. In all honesty, Little Girl was the one doing all the selling. “Girl Scout cookies! Wanna buy some cookies?”

Still, we sold 43 boxes, and Big Girl got a taste of what it felt like to be successful. Our next sale was unintentional. We were at a local sandwich shop. It was packed. I asked the manager if we could walk table-to-table selling our cookies. She said yes, and we were off. This time Big Girl’s selling skills were marginally better. She actually had three people tell her that she needed to look them in the face if she wanted them to make a purchase. She held it together, though, and started making occasional eye contact and speaking loud enough for people to hear her. We sold 20 boxes within 15 minutes. Soon after, we walked around in our town. A few days later we visited my old hometown. We also hit three local railroad stations, and poked our heads in bars, pizza joints, and delis. With every sale, Big Girl got a little more confident. She hit her stride when, at the new Moe’s by our house, the owner told her he would buy whatever she had left if she could do the math. (It was 14 boxes. She did the calculations in her head and got it right.)

By our last sale — at the local railroad — she was unstoppable. “Get your Girl Scout cookies,” she barked. “I’m down to my last eight boxes. These are going fast!” And they did. She sold cookies to the last five people she approached. I was even more impressed when she forgot to hand over a box after a sale and, when the guy reproached her, she held it together even though she was completely embarrassed. A few years ago something like that would have sent her into a crying jag.

Sure, there were some glitches. At the supermarket sale, for instance, she started hyperventilating when someone asked her to recite the Girl Scout Promise. Imagine my surprise when she not only said it at a railroad sale a few days later, but smiled the whole time.

So how do I feel about Girl Scout cookies? I feel pretty good. All the sales and marketing materials tout how good Girl Scouts are for the girls. Until now, I sort of poo-pooed that. However, my kid is a shining example of what a kid-run sale can actually do. Would it have been easier for me to post on Facebook and get my husband to bring her order form to work? Sure, then I would have missed out on seeing my child beaming with pride from her accomplishment.

Bellies are for tickling...

How do you review a child’s book? It’s not like you can critique its dialog or plotline. No, for me the best measure of a children’s book is how hard and how long my little one laughs.

Sandra Boynton knows how to make kids laugh. Her latest book, Tickle Time!, is a perfect example. Little Girl started giggling as soon as I read her the title off “the title page.” (Her Montessori school, apparently, taught her what a title page is. That’s my girl, and yes, I digress.) When I read the first line (Gitch-gitchy goo) she started belly-laughing. In fact, we laughed through the entire 22-page book. Her favorite part, she says, is the little bird who, about a third of the way through, says, “Goo bop. Gitchy-goo bop.”

Yes, it’s silly, but it’s also got a strong rhyme throughout, and actually got my 3-year-old to come up with her own rhymes. She liked it so much that she’s bringing it to preschool today hoping the teacher will read it.

The book, which is based on a song from Boynton’s Rhinoceros Tap CD, is targeted at the toddler set, but I have a feeling my 8-year-old is going to like listening to it as well. After all, who doesn’t need a good laugh once in a while?

I got contact lenses when I was 12. I can still remember how excited I was to be rid of my coke-bottle glasses. (My eyesight is atrocious. My vision is 800/20 in the left eye and 750/20 in the right.) I was a diligent kid, and quickly learned how to put them in, take them out, and carefully disinfect them. Still, I was 12. On the cusp of being a teenager. There’s a big difference between eight and 12.

The reason I’m even contemplating such a move is that Big Girl is terrible about wearing her glasses. Her vision is 20/20 in her left eye. Her right eye is 20/60 — not terrible, but just bad enough that she says her vision is “blurry.” And yet she forgets to wear the glasses all the time. When she does wear them she will leave them places. I just found one of her three pairs — the new one that I paid $150 for, I might add — inside the couch. They had been missing for two months.

Recently, I came across a study out of Ohio State University that found “8- to 11-year-olds can handle the responsibility of contact lenses just as well as their older peers.” The study appeared in the journal, Optometry and Vision Science.

More details from the study: “Children wore their lenses an average of 11 hours a day by the end of the study. By the third month, nine of the 10 children reported that their vision was “pretty good” or “perfect”; all children but one said their eyes were “always comfortable” or “usually comfortable”; eight children said they had little to no problem putting in their contact lenses; and all children reported that they had little to no problem with taking the lenses out.”

Sounds good, right? But would my little girl, who is tightly-wound, sensitive, and a daydreamer be able to handle putting in and taking out lenses? And, as a parent, shouldn’t I just be more forceful about her wearing her glasses? Should I just give up without trying to get glasses-wearing compliance? I’m really not sure, which is why I’m taking to my blog to ask: What do you think about contacts for a child? Does your child wear lenses? How has it worked out? I’d like to know.

Cons: Contains seven grams of sugar, which is on the high side for something marketed as a “healthier” cereal.

My Big Girl is in an anti-cereal phase. She won’t eat her Joe’s Os anymore. She doesn’t like Puffins, she says. I like her to eat something in the morning, so I’ve been on a quest for a new cereal, buying anything I think she might like. I saw Crunchy Vanilla Sunrise during my last trip to Whole Foods and picked it up. I was wrangling Little Girl at the time, so I only gave the box a quick look, but I liked what I saw. The front clearly stated it was organic and contained three grams of fiber, two grams of protein, and 11 percent of the daily recommended allowance of omega-3s. I also liked what was missing: preservatives and artificial colors and flavors. Its sodium content wasn’t too bad, either. Just 130 milligrams.

When we got home, I showed Big Girl my find, offering her a bowl of the stuff. She was skeptical. It doesn’t look like other cereals, she said. She’s right. It’s not uniform in size, shape, or color. In fact, it’s what I’d call a fun mix of shapes and textures. (Thanks to the ancient grains like quinoa and amaranth.) Big Girl, however, wouldn’t try it.

The cereal has puffs and flakes and pieces.

Not wanting to waste a box of cereal, I poured myself a bowl for lunch the next day. It was quite yummy. The cereal has a nice crunch to it, and all those different shapes and sizes make for a different experience in every spoonful. As for the taste: The vanilla is very subtle, but it is pretty sweet overall. So sweet, in fact, that after I took a second bite I had to give the label another look. That’s when I saw that sugar (evaporated cane juice to be exact) was the second ingredient. Here’s the full list of ingredients:

Whole corn meal, evaporated cane juice, brown rice flour, yellow corn flour, inulin, quinoa puffs, flax seeds, natural vanilla flavor, buckwheat flour, quinoa, sea salt, amaranth, molasses, tocopherols (natural vitamin E)

When you consider that four grams of sugar equals about a teaspoon of sugar, that means every bowl of Organic Crunchy Vanilla Sunrise has almost two teaspoons of the stuff. While it’s not a deal-breaker for me, I do wish it had a little less sugar. On the plus side — and what’s frightening — is that the sugar content is relatively low when you compare it with other cereals.

This past December the Environmental Working Group (EWG) assessed breakfast cereals and found some were 55.6, 51.9, and 48.3 percent sugar by weight. (The offending cereals were Kellogg’s Honey Smacks, Post Golden Crisp, and Kellogg’s Froot Loops Marshmallow, respectively. Organic Crunchy Vanilla Sunrise, by comparison, is 23.3 percent sugar by weight.) You can look at the rest of the 10 Worst Children’s Cereals here.

There are a few issues when you add sugar to breakfast cereal. Littler kids especially have issues when sugar content creeps up. From an EWG press release:

“Studies suggest that children who eat breakfasts that are high in sugar have more problems at school. They become more frustrated and have a harder time working independently than kids who eat lower-sugar breakfasts. By lunchtime they have less energy, are hungrier, show attention deficits and make more mistakes on their work.”

I have digressed completely. Again, this cereal falls below the suggested eight grams of sugar per bowl, so since I’m eating it — and loving it, I might add — I’ll keep buying it. Will I give it to my 3-year-old? Probably not, but if Big Girl, who is eight wanted to try it, I’d probably happily pour her a bowl. And since I do like this cereal, I’m definitely checking out some of the other Nature’s Path offerings, which made it on to the EWG’s list of best cereals (meaning they are lower in sugar) including Optimum Cranberry Ginger, Corn Puffs, Kamut Puffs, Millet Puffs, and Rice Puffs.

How does your breakfast cereal stack up? Take a look at the EWG’s analysis of 84 popular cereal offerings if you’re not sure.