“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.

This week, The Alliance for a Clean and Healthy Maine Mainely Moms and Dads confirmed the chemical is still out there, and it can be found in many of the foods we’re giving our babies and toddlers. From the organization’s news release:

“The Alliance for a Clean and Healthy Maine sent fifteen containers of food to Anresco Laboratories for analysis in January and released the results today. BPA was found in 11 of the 12 sampled containers of baby food manufactured by Beech-Nut, Gerber, Earth’s Best Organic and Shaw’s Wild Harvest brand. It was also found in all three of the canned foods sampled including Campbell’s Disney Princess SpaghettiOs, Dora the Explorer soup, and Chef Boyardee macaroni and cheese.”

This is pretty scary. In case you haven’t seen the data: Teams of independent researchers have found that BPA isn’t as safe as once though. The reason: It acts as an endocrine disruptor, mimicking human hormones like estrogen. People have linked it to increased risk of breast cancer, thyroid issues, lowered male fertility rates, decreased birth weight, and wheezing, among other ailments and issues. Another October 2011 Harvard School of Public Health study found BPA exposure in the womb is linked to behavioral and emotional difficulties in girls. Of course the folks who bring us this plastic and resin say it’s perfectly fine. Me? I’m thinking that all those researchers can’t be wrong, which is why I limit my family’s BPA exposure as much as possible.

The smart folks in Maine are asking manufacturers of food intentionally marketed or sold to children under three to replace BPA or disclose how much BPA is in their packaging. They say a second phase will ask for a complete ban of the substance. It’s a start, I guess, but I’d rather see our governments come out and ban BPA in all food containers as well as anything that might be ingested by kids or adults. What do you think?

Right now, I’ve got both my girls in Britax Frontier 85s, convertible boosters that can be used with a 5-point harness or with the regular seat belt. They are great, but big, so whenever I try and add a third kid back there, I am at a loss. I have two options: shoehorning the kid in between the two boosters and forgoing a booster seat for that child or leaving my little one home with a sitter so I can have the child sit in Little Girl’s booster. Both options are unappealing. Either I am driving around unsafely or I’m paying a sitter. When I explain my space issues, most parents don’t care, telling me to just put their kid in there without a booster. (One even told me to let her child sit in the front seat — I refused, and I digress.) This seems to be happening across the country, according to a new American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) study that was released today.

The study — Carpooling and Booster Seats: A National Survey of Parents — found that “more than half of parents carpool children other than their own, but they do not always use boosters for children who usually use one.” The study was published in the February, 2012 issue of Pediatrics, the AAP’s journal.

There was good news in the report. Around three out of every four 4- to 8-year-olds were using seat belts as per their state laws, but booster seat use, especially for carpoolers, wasn’t as good. Here’s the thing: national recommendations say that kids should be in boosters until they are 57 inches tall. My 8-year-old, for instance, is only 44 inches, so she’s got a while before she should give up her booster.

Here in New York the booster seat law requires kids under eight to be in a seat, but it also says that kids who are shorter than 4’9″ or who weigh less than 100 pounds should keep using their seat. Take a look at the brochure yourself. (And here’s an excerpt.)

An appropriate child safety restraint system:

• Is required for all children until their 8th birthday and
• Must meet the size and weight requirements for the child based on the Federal requirements and the recommendations of the manufacturer, and
• Can be a child safety seat, a harness, a vest or a booster seat attached with the vehicle seat belt or latch system, but not the vehicle seat belt alone, and
• Should not be used in the front seat of the vehicle.
• If the child is eight years old and is under 4’9″ tall or weighs less than 100 lbs, it is recommended that you continue to use a child restraint system.

So yes, I need a new car, preferably one with a third row so I can safely transport my own kids and their friends. That’s really not too much to ask.

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I wasn’t surprised since, as a child I spent half my life drinking pink Amoxicillin and chewing baby aspirin. Still, I calmly explained that no, I didn’t give her anything since having a fever is actually a good thing. It’s the body’s way of fighting the infection. Bringing the fever down would be like putting a muzzle on a guard dog. A silly, silly idea.

The fever persisted into the afternoon so, after my webinar, I stopped into the pediatrician just to let them take a look-see. She didn’t have any other symptoms, but she was complaining that her lower belly hurt making me wonder if it was a urinary tract infection. The doctor did a thorough exam with Little Girl sitting and screaming in my arms since she is terrified of the doctor. (That’s another blog post — an after effect of her liquid stitches experience last month.) The doctor also got a urine sample and cultured it. At the end of the exam, my doctor said Little Girl probably had a virus, sending me on my way without medicine, I might add. She did say I could give Little Girl Tylenol or Motrin if she was complaining a lot or was unable to sleep, but otherwise keep doing what I was doing: giving her lots of fluids, keeping her quiet, and encouraging her to rest.

Tonight around 11 p.m. my phone rang. It was my mom. Again, she asked if I had given Little Girl anything for her fever. This time, I couldn’t help myself. Apple iPad in hand, I pulled up the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) website and read something to her. Back in February the organization came out with a new clinical report — Fever and Antipyretic Use in Children — that spoke to the use of fever reducers. From the report (I added the bold):

Fever, however, is not the primary illness but is a physiologic mechanism that has beneficial effects in fighting infection. There is no evidence that fever itself worsens the course of an illness or that it causes long-term neurologic complications. Thus, the primary goal of treating the febrile [with fever] child should be to improve the child’s overall comfort rather than focus on the normalization of body temperature.

Bottom line: Parents should not give Tylenol or Motrin — should not try and bring the fever down — unless the kid feels so terrible that they can’t sleep, eat, and drink. If they’re just a little hot, parents should let their immune system do what it needs to do. I’ve always done this for myself, too. I try not to take anything when I have a fever, instead picturing my germs sizzling and dying in my own internal sauna. (What do you expect? I’m half delirious with fever!)

Of course, I also follow common sense rules. I watch that the fever doesn’t go too high (for me that cut off is 102.5) and that everything else is okay. The patient, whether it’s me or my kids, must be drinking, urinating, and not in any pain that interferes with their normal personality. I also make sure the patient can sleep, since rest is so important when you’re fighting a virus or infection.

Little Girl went to sleep at 7 p.m. I’ve checked on her every few hours, and she seems cooler than she was in the morning. She hasn’t woken up (so far) and she hasn’t developed any other symptoms. I will keep a close eye on her, though, especially over the next few days and go back to the doctor if the fever lingers past the weekend or if she develops any symptoms that make me nervous. As for the bottle of Tylenol that my mom keeps pushing? I’m keeping it ready, but hoping, like the AAP suggests, I don’t need to use it.

My husband's cast iron skillet: The grosser it looks, the better it is to cook on!

First, a little background. You and I call it Teflon, but what we’re really talking about is perfluorooctanoic acid (or PFOA), which is what manufacturers use to make all your brownie pans, frying pans, and turkey roasters non-stick. You can also find the chemical, which is sometimes referred to as C8, inside of packaged foods containers such as microwave popcorn bags and in many other consumer products. (The Environmental Protection Agency has a page dedicated to PFOA that’s got a lot more information. It’s certainly worth a read. You can find it here.)

Here are the problems that the EPA had with PFOA, taken directly from its site:

• PFOA is very persistent in the environment; it doesn’t break down and go away.
• It is found everywhere. You can see very low levels both in the environment and in the blood of the general U.S. population
• It sticks around inside of us for very long time, too. Once you ingest it or breathe it in, it’s in there.
• It has been found to cause “developmental and other adverse effects in laboratory animals.” (And in humans, too!)

If you’re like me, the last item in the list might be the one that’s giving you pause. What kind of adverse effects, you might want to know. Well, according to research studies PFOA can be linked to:

• Lower birth rate and size: Researchers at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health found that babies with higher concentrations of the chemical had smaller heads and lower body weights. Read the study here.
• Infertility: Women with higher levels of PFOA took longer to get pregnant, according to a study out of the UCLA School of Public Health.
• Elevated cholesterol: Kids with higher levels of PFOA have higher cholesterol levels, according to a study in the Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine, one of the JAMA/Archives journals.
• Thyroid disease: A “study revealed that people with higher concentrations of PFOA in their blood have higher rates of thyroid disease. The researchers analyzed samples from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s nationally representative National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES),” according to researchers.
• ADHD: In this study, Boston University School of Public Health researchers found “increased odds of ADHD in children with higher serum PFC levels.” (PFOA is one of the PFCs they tracked.)

There have also been studies linking PFOA to cancer, although most of the research has been on the effects of PFOA released into the environment as a byproduct of manufacturing. No matter, the research is so compelling that, way back in 2006, the EPA asked manufacturers to phase out the chemical. Eight large non-stick manufacturers complied. The voluntary ban will be achieved by 2015, but that doesn’t do anything for all the folks who have non-stick cookware in their homes already unless they proactively get rid of everything non-stick they own.

That’s exactly what we did. Despite the fact that my husband loved his non-stick griddle, we tossed it along with four frying pans, a brownie pan, cake pans, cookie sheets, and a roasting pan. We actually threw it in the recycling bin rather than donating it to make sure it wasn’t going to be around to potentially make someone else sick. Today, we use either cast iron or stainless steel when we cook, bake, or fry, and I didn’t spend a fortune to make this happen.

My husband, for instance, got a $30 cast iron griddle to replace his beloved non-stick one. (No, he did not like it in the beginning, but has grown to love it.) I bought it from my local Target, and was thrilled to discover it was actually made in the United States, which is a rarity these days. Target also carries a number of other cast iron Lodge products including loaf pans, skittles, and fryers. (Note: I have nothing to do with Target or Lodge and am not being paid to say that. I just like the products.) I picked up some really inexpensive Pyrex brownie and cake pans at the Pyrex outlet. I got my stainless stuff as hand-me-downs, and was actually pleased to find that I had a plain stainless cookie sheet already sitting in my cabinet as well as a nice stainless frying pan.

From a cooking perspective, I love the fact that the glass and stainless stuff cleans up really easily. It’s also adding some extra flavor to my baking since I am forced to grease and flour my cake pans and butter up the brownie pan. The cast iron griddle, which is fully seasoned now, gives off a warm, homey smell when things are cooking on it. Plus, I love the extra boost of iron the entire family gets with our pancakes and eggs. (The American Dietetic Association confirms that cooking foods in or on cast iron increases the amount of iron in foods.)

Of course, most people aren’t going to be able to toss all their non-stick cookware into the garbage like I did, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t do something. I challenge everyone to replace one pan — the one you use the most — by the end of the year since it can make a huge difference in your PFOA exposure. Ready to give it a shot?

This post is how I am participating in this week’s Real Food Wednesdays and Fight Back Fridays, two awesome blog carnivals dedicated to promoting the use and consumption of — what else? — real food.

Most of us probably remember or have used moth balls. Small, smelly white things, they are used to help prevent insect and pest infestation in stored clothing. Carpet beetles, moths, and mice, among other things, hate the smell of moth balls. I do, too, actually, and for good reason. The key ingredient of mothballs is naphthalene or para-dichlorobenzene, which, according to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), is dangerous stuff. “Inhaling para-dichlorobenzene can lead to vomiting, diarrhea, respiratory distress and other illnesses. Swallowing it can damage the nervous system and, in extreme cases, can cause coma or death.” Oh, and it effects your red blood cells. Here’s the EPA’s product fact sheet on the stuff. Babies and children are especially vulnerable as deaths of preemies and infants have been reported after exposure. Nice.

As usual, the European Union is WAY ahead of the United States when it comes to this dangerous chemical. It banned the pesticide in 2008. The reasoning, of course, is that when you open up clothing stored in moth balls, you are inhaling the pesticide. If you can smell it, you are inhaling it. That’s probably why pediatric doctors in Australia and New Zealand are also trying to get the substance banned.

I totally understand why. I opened up my Space Bags three days ago and almost fell over from the smell. I put both bags outside hoping the smell would dissipate. Today, the smell is still just as strong as it was when I first broke the airtight seal. All those beautiful clothes have been rendered unwearable. I’m not sure what I am going to do. Thankfully, I only used moth balls on the 3T stuff, and decided pretty soon after that moth balls were dangerous and stupid so my 4Ts will be as moth ball-free as the 2T, 18 month, and infant stuff was.

So what’s the take-away? Why should you care? It bears a reminder that just because something is sold at the store doesn’t mean it’s healthy or safe to use, especially around children. Here I thought I was doing something smart, and I was doing something extremely stupid by adding a chemical to clothing that would have gone on my kid’s skin. It’s also a reminder to be especially careful when taking out heirloom or stored clothing that may have been stored with the chemical. Moth balls are bad news. Protect your kids, and protect yourself.

And what about all those gorgeous clothes sitting in my backyard? Yesterday I dumped them into a mesh bag. I’ll check them again next week, however I anticipate I’ll be making a trip to the stores soon. I’m thinking it will be fall (at the earliest) before we’ll be able to use them!

Healthy breakfast or chemical-laden ooze? You decide.

Every morning Big Girl and Little Girl have cereal and yogurt. It’s organic yogurt free of artificial flavors and colors, but I still wonder how healthy it is. You see, it comes in a big plastic tub.

I believe the tub is BPA-free, but I can’t really be absolutely sure, can I? I looked it up, of course. It’s marked with a 5, which means it’s polypropylene, according to this Daily Green article. Once I knew what it was made of I looked up that material on Dow Chemical’s product page. Once there, I read all about it. I was somewhat mollified to learn that it’s used for food storage in the European Union, too. (Given its proactive stance on food dyes, BPA, and genetically modified foods, I feel like the EU is a better bellwether than the U.S. government as to whether or not something is healthy.) But can I trust those sources? How do I really know that chemicals aren’t leeching into my supposedly healthy breakfast staple?

I don’t, of course, and it’s not like I can go out and make my own yogurt or buy yogurt in glass jars. So what’s a mom to do? I’m not going to stop giving my kids a food that’s providing 35 percent of their daily calcium intake. Not to mention all the Vitamin D and protein. Have any ideas?

One day, I hope, I won’t have to think about any of this. I will feel safe and protected. Until that day, I have to ask: Have any other ideas on the topic?

This post is how I am participating this week in Real Food Wednesdays and Fight Back Fridays — two awesome campaigns to get people eating real food again.

A quick apology to all my overseas friends: This blog post doesn’t pertain to you, and there are a lot of you now. But it’s important enough that I had to write it.

I have a new client that wants me to hold $1 million worth of general liability insurance. Okay, so I call my insurance broker and ask her to hook me up. She comes back with questions: Who are your other clients? How much do you make per year? Where is your office? I give her the details, and she hangs up. Then she calls me back with a final question: What’s your Social Security number? I tell her flat out that I don’t give anyone except the government that information. She hems and haws, but then she says she’ll try and create the policy without it.

She ends up not being able to write the policy, but it wasn’t because of my lack of Social Security number. My house is too close to the water, and insurance companies are babies about the whole hurricane path thing. Since I still needed the policy, I contacted a second agent who was able to get me the policy I was looking for. Without my Social Security number, I might add! In fact, he didn’t even ask for it at all.

As a journalist who covers personal finance I have written about this topic before, (check out this story that appeared on Creditcards.com, FoxBusiness, and Yahoo! Finance) but it’s worth saying again. And again and again: Your Social Security number should be given out on a need-to-know basis.

Your employer needs it to report your income. The state and federal governments need to know it for tax purposes. And anyone who provides you with credit such as a credit card company or loan service needs it to check your credit score. But that’s really it. Doctors, dentists, insurance agents, your child’s school, your gym, your optician, a college or university — NONE of these people have the legal right to require you to disclose your Social Security number. The only exception is education-related. If you or your child receive a federally-funded program like free lunch or you get federal loans or grants the school will need a Social Security number to complete the transaction.

So what’s going on? Why do so many people want your Social Security number? Companies like to have it because it’s unique to you. Most want to use it as a personal identification number, which is a stupid, dangerous practice. So, repeat after me: No, I don’t give anyone my Social Security number. That’s what you need to say if someone asks you. If you’re filling out a form, just skip over the line. If questioned, say a) they are not allowed to ask for it and b) ask why they want it. Most people will tell you they don’t know why; it’s just the way things are done around there. (FAIL!) And if they tell you they can’t treat/serve/help you without your disclosure? Turn around and leave. Then you’ll see how quickly that “required” piece of information becomes a non-issue.

I really appreciate you apologizing so profusely when, out of the blue, your 20-month-old went postal on my 2-year-old and smacked her as we passed by. I really do. I wasn’t that fazed by it, actually. Kids are kids. They do nutty things. And I didn’t think a second thought about the fact that the kid was bouncing off the walls and screaming at the top of his lungs so early in the morning. (Wow, he can really shriek, can’t he!) Or that he wasn’t listening to a word you said when you were asking him ever so nicely to apologize. Until, that is, I saw what you were feeding him. A huge cup of Froot Loops, a cup of some otherworld-colored red juice, and a bag of cookies. Hmmm.

Hey, lady, don’t take this the wrong way but how can you expect your kid NOT to be hyped up and wacky when you are feeding him crap for breakfast? Yes, I said it. Crap. A quick read of Fooducate’s excellent blog post — Froot Loops is NOT a “Smart Choice” — about the topic explains why. See, that large cup of cereal you’re giving your kid? Well, it’s probably bigger than the actual serving size that has — get this — 12.5 grams of sugar and 150 calories. In fact, the first ingredient, according to the good folks at Kellogg’s, is SUGAR! Here’s the ingredients list taken from the Google cache of the Kellogg’s website. (I couldn’t get the actual Kellogg’s ingredients page to load live.)

SUGAR; WHOLE GRAIN CORN FLOUR; WHEAT FLOUR; WHOLE GRAIN OAT FLOUR; OAT FIBER; SOLUBLE CORN FIBER; PARTIALLY HYDROGENATED VEGETABLE OIL (ONE OR MORE OF: COCONUT, SOYBEAN AND/OR COTTONSEED OILS)†; SALT; SODIUM ASCORBATE AND ASCORBIC ACID (VITAMIN C); NIACINAMIDE; REDUCED IRON; NATURAL ORANGE, LEMON, CHERRY, RASPBERRY, BLUEBERRY, LIME AND OTHER NATURAL FLAVORS; RED #40; BLUE #2; TURMERIC COLOR; YELLOW #6; ZINC OXIDE; ANNATTO COLOR; BLUE #1; PYRIDOXINE HYDROCHLORIDE (VITAMIN B6); RIBOFLAVIN (VITAMIN B2); THIAMIN HYDROCHLORIDE (VITAMIN B1); VITAMIN A PALMITATE; BHT (PRESERVATIVE); FOLIC ACID; VITAMIN D; VITAMIN B12. † LESS THAN 0.5g TRANS FAT PER SERVING.

I love Fooducate’s take on this, so I will just provide it below.

“In fact, Froot Loops is 41% sugar by weight. And Whoa(!) partially hydrogenated vegetable oil too. Doesn’t sound like a smart choice to us. A 1 oz serving (which by the way is too small for regular people) contains 12 grams of sugar – that’s 3 teaspoons. 48 of the 110 calories per serving are from sugar.”

I will give Kellogg’s props for going for the real sugar over the high fructose junk, but still…that’s a lot of sugar! What, you don’t think sugar riles kids up? Okay, well you can’t dispute the fact that the artificial colors do. About two years ago The Center for Science in the Public Interest formally petitioned the Food and Drug Administration to ban eight artificial colors that had been conclusively linked to hyperactivity in children: Yellow 5, Red 40, Blue 1, Blue 2, Green 3, Orange 8, Red 3, and Yellow 6.

The FDA in March will finally get around to determining whether or not the ban should happen. Meanwhile, in Europe, there’s already a warning label on foods that contain these chemicals: “Consumption may have an adverse effect on activity and attention in children.” But I digress as always…

By my count, there are four of the six offending colors in Froot Loops. Wow. So maybe, just maybe that’s the reason your kid is acting a little wacky? Kid eats food dyes and LOTS of sugar. Kid goes bonkers and starts smacking anything that walks by it. Sort of like a rabid dog. But instead of rabid we’ll call it hopped up on sugar and food dyes kid. And we haven’t even touched the colored water masquerading as juice or the bag of cookies!

Okay, so getting back to the point of this letter. Again, I am so fine with the fact that your kid smacked my kid in an unprovoked manner. Kids that young are just learning. I can even overlook the frenetic behavior. Big resort. Micky and Minnie hanging out close by. However, I am not fine with the fact that you’re giving him food that’s possibly making him nuts. Maybe you could try a more healthy alternative next time? If not for your kid’s health but the health of the innocent bystanders?

Getting off my soap box now, and thanks in advance! Love, –KB

This post is how I am participating this week in Real Food Wednesdays and Fight Back Fridays — two awesome campaigns to get people eating real food again.