As kids burst into the house, eating healthy is the last thing on their minds. No pantry or refrigerator is safe.

Raising two sons and a daughter, Crystal Petersen, food nutrition director and registered dietitian at Covenant Medical Center, learned to plan ahead.

“Watermelon can sit on the counter and nobody will eat it,” she said. “But if you cut it up ahead of time and have it in a clear container in the refrigerator, it’s accessible and ready to go.”

image via medicalfits.blogspot.com

A snack can be important for energy levels and mood, especially if a family doesn’t eat supper until, say, 7:30 p.m., Petersen said. Those who eat earlier can make a snack the first course of the meal.

Yogurts, smoothies, parfaits, trail mix, whole-grain cereal with milk, granola bars, wraps with vegetables and cheese, celery with peanut butter or microwavable quesadillas are simple and quick. Tuna salad kits with crackers are shelf-stable and sold near the canned tuna at the grocery store.

Whole-grain foods should contain about two grams of protein and three grams of fiber per serving, said registered dietitian Stephanie Wharton at Crossroads Hy-Vee. Smart drinks include low-calorie beverages, like 100 percent juice, milk or water.

Younger kids with someone at home to greet them can turn snacks into an activity, like making bugs out of vegetables or creating whole-grain cracker sandwiches with low-sodium deli meat.

Snacks can be used to introduce foods, like hummus for dipping carrots, to ensure a child gets recommended daily nutrients and to combat obesity.

According to the National Dairy Council, research shows children who included calcium from dairy foods in their diet had lower body fat than children with lower dairy calcium intakes. Nearly nine out of 10 teenage girls and seven of 10 teen boys fail to get enough calcium.

Petersen’s kids participated in sports and other extracurricular activities, so she sent snacks or mini meals in their backpacks and vehicles. Two are in college now and one is a high school senior, but their healthy eating habits have continued. Her daughter totes an insulated lunch bag.

“It beats the convenience store pop and candy bar,” Petersen said. “Just a little thought into it and it’s not too hard to pull off, really.”

Parents also should discuss portion sizes, a challenge for grumbling stomachs. Individually packaged 100-calorie foods are helpful but can get expensive. Instead, families can buy in bulk and measure each serving into plastic bags.

“Everything in moderation,” Wharton said. “If you bring a whole bag of something, you tend to eat more.”

Also, save money by purchasing fresh produce in season, though canned fruits in juice or extra-light syrup are good options if pressed for time, Wharton said.

But children shouldn’t fear cookies and greasy chips, nutritionists say. Bodies need fat, too, and those should be used as an occasional treat.

“Don’t deprive them of it,” Wharton said. “Then they go to a friend’s house or once they get older and can purchase it on their own, they might go crazy.

“And I’m not a big believer in rewarding with bad food because that’s kind of sending a wrong message,” she added.

Many families are feeling the pinch as well, particularly with the start of the school year and the costs of college education.

Parenting Ain’t Easy hosted a live chat Friday regarding finances and budgeting.

Scott Shook, director of the Horizons Consumer Credit Counseling Service, and Linda Bigley, director of the Iowa State University Extension’s Linn County office, offered advice and tips to families looking to establish or maintain a regular budget, and what to do if you’re in over your head financially.

Replay the live chat below.

Yet any ill feelings Faiola had about her parents’ lessons in frugality are long gone. These days, when she sees friends burdened with debt and worrying about how to pay their mortgages, Faiola, now 33, is grateful. “It didn’t always feel like that,” said the Bellingham, Wash., website entrepreneur. Yet when the economy went south two years ago and she had money in the bank, Faiola knew whom to thank.

Frugality has taken on a certain shabby chic in the struggling economy, but for some, watching pennies is more than the latest fad. There’s always been a segment of the population that by conviction, or necessity, saved by eating at home, shopping at discount stores and choosing practical cars over the latest luxury models. Those lessons were not lost on the children who grew up in these homes. As adults, even those who have developed some extravagant habits say they have a strong awareness of the value of a dollar, the importance of saving, and the dangers of debt.

“I did have my time of going wild, but I always paid it off,” said Priti Mehta, 28, who works for a nonprofit and is a graduate student in Albuquerque, N.M.

Financial literacy pundits insist children absorb the spending habits of their parents. Yet there’s little research examining whether the children of frugal parents are more or less likely to be careful with money, said Tim Kasser, the chairman of the psychology department at Knox College in Galesburg, Ill., and an expert on materialism. “Thrift hasn’t been of major interest to American culture in the last 60 years or so,” he said. “It’s been about trying to get people to be materialistic, not thrifty.”

Kasser said he could see both possibilities. “On the one hand, children learn their values around anything, including money, from their parents.” Yet it’s also clear that children rebel, he said, especially when they don’t have a say in what affects them.

Whether individuals grow up to be thrifty is probably going to be influenced by whether they had a thrifty parent. If parents make saving money fun, give children choices and explain why careful spending is a good way to live, the children will probably get the message, he said.

That’s what Trent Hamm is counting on. The writer and creator of TheSimpleDollar.com grew up in a poor household where any money available was quickly spent. As a young adult, he ran up nearly $50,000 in debt before transforming his ways and becoming an advocate for living a frugal lifestyle.

Today, when he blogs about the financial lessons he’s teaching his three children, particularly his 4-year-old son, some readers question whether he’s putting too much emphasis on cost at an early age.

“A lot of their habits are being defined now,” Hamm, 31, said in his defense. “You’re setting a model as an adult that they can follow.”

Hamm said he explains his choices to his son. They play at the park rather than visit an amusement center that charges admission, for instance. The money saved goes toward vacation. “Even if he doesn’t fully understand that it’s going to be a long time before vacation, he knows that there’s a good reason for saving,” Hamm said.

“I don’t mind if he thinks I’m an idiot from age 15 to age 25,” he said. “As long as he comes out OK on the other end, that’s great.”

What “OK” means as adults varies, of course.

Lauren Weber’s father was so tight with money that he once tried to ration the family’s toilet paper. “Fortunately he couldn’t find a way to monitor that, so it didn’t last very long,” she joked.

Now 39, Weber, who grew up in East Lyme, Conn., said there were times when she rebelled. Yet she found herself growing more like her father over the years. She sheepishly recalls searching the Internet for information about botulism one evening. The reason? She was eating a meal made with questionable canned goods she was reluctant to discard. But the author of “In Cheap We Trust: The Story of a Misunderstood American Virtue,” says she also allows herself to spend money on occasion — like her $350 pair of boots.

“It’s OK to indulge once in a while,” Weber said. “But my once-in-a-while is once a year, maybe twice a year.”

On the other end of the spectrum is Nick Bhardwaj. At 22 he has already amassed far more money than his single mother had while raising him in Sacramento, Calif., thanks to a well-timed business venture that profited from falling real estate prices. “I’m an impulse buyer,” he admitted. “I’m very brand-oriented, top of the line stuff, especially when it comes to clothes.”

“I will always look for the best deal,” he said. “But it’s become secondary to the thought of what I would like the most.”

Because his income supports his habit, Bhardwaj isn’t concerned about his finances right now. Still, he’s concerned about what example he’ll set when he has children of his own.

“I know my spending habits are not something I should be giving to my kid,” he said. “But the ability to afford things that others might not have isn’t a bad thing, in moderation.”

Whether they’re starting school for the first time or returning to classes, it can be challenging to establish strict times for studying, sleeping and more.

Kindergartners in Julie Meisinger's and Laura Noble's class stand for the Pledge of Allegiance during the first day of school at Taylor Elementary School on Thursday, July 22, 2010, southwest Cedar Rapids. This is the first day of year-round school at Taylor since the 2008 flood. Last year, the school opened to a traditional schedule. (Jim Slosiarek/The Gazette)

Valerie Dolezal, principal at Grant Early Childhood Center in Cedar Rapids, will offer advice to parents during this hour-long chat.

Replay the live chat below.

Some young girls, barely into grade school, are showing the first signs of puberty. A study published this week in the journal Pediatrics finds that these early maturers are far more common now than just a decade ago.

By age 7, about 10 percent of white and 23 percent of black girls had started developing breasts, the researchers found. That compared to just 5 and 15 percent respectively in a similar study published in 1997.

Girls as young as 8 may dress like teens, talk like teens and mature physically like teens but emotionally they are still young girls. Many feel caught between the worlds of childhood and adolescence. (Gazette illustration)

The new research confirms what many doctors have been seeing in their practices for years, said Lore Nelson, an adolescent medicine specialist at the University of Kansas Hospital.

“It’s one of those things everyone thought was happening, now it looks like it really is happening,” she said. “We’re just seeing girls maturing earlier.”

The researchers suggest the epidemic of childhood obesity — one in five U.S. children ages 6 to 11 — may be a cause of girls’ precocious development.

Obesity has been associated with early puberty because fat cells can trigger the production of the female hormone estrogen. The researchers did find that breast development at age 7 was more common among heavier girls.

But more than obesity may be at play. Certain chemicals in the environment also need to be studied, many say.

These chemicals, such as bisphenol A, act like estrogen. Bisphenol A is used in many plastics, food packaging and even dental sealants.

Whatever the cause, Nelson said, “it would behoove everyone to diet and exercise. Obesity is such a problem now for kids.”

But early maturation itself can cause serious health and social problem for young girls.

Girls who enter puberty early run higher risks of breast cancer and endometrial cancer.

They are more likely to have lower self-esteem and a poor body image. Their rates of eating disorders, depression and suicide attempts are higher. They’re more likely to become sexually active at an early age.

“If you’re 8 and look like you’re 12, people have different expectations about you,” Nelson said. “I think it gets them into situations they’re not ready to handle, such as dating.”

The federally funded study recruited 1,239 girls ages 6 to 8 from East Harlem in New York, the Cincinnati metropolitan area and the San Francisco Bay area. The researchers examined the girls at ages 7 and 8 for early signs of puberty.

The study did not look at when girls first menstruate, which usually begins at about age 12 or 13.

“Theoretically, it’s possible the age when puberty starts could keep dropping,” said Jill Jacobson, a pediatric endocrinologist at Children’s Mercy Hospital. She checks children to rule out medical issues that can trigger early puberty.

“Girls tend to be more self-conscious than boys about early puberty,” she said. “It can be alarming to mothers.”

Jacobson is concerned that findings such as those in this new study may lead doctors to consider an earlier age of puberty as a “new normal.” That may leave many children with serious undiagnosed medical problems, she said.

Conditions such as adrenal gland disorders and brain tumors can all trigger early puberty.

“If we accept these lower ages as normal that could mask children with serious hormonal disorders,” Jacobson said.

– McClatchey-Tribune News Service

In the interview, which hit newsstands earlier this week, Bundchen declared, “There should be a worldwide law, in my opinion, that mothers should breastfeed their babies for six months. Are you going to give chemical food to your child, when they are so little?”

Gisele Bundchen

Parenting groups have lined up on both sides to share their views on Bundchen’s assertion. Some praise her adamant advocacy for breastfeeeding and its nutritional and psychological benefits. Others say she’s trying to use her celebrity status (besides being a supermodel, she’s married to New England Patriots star quarterback Tom Brady, if you weren’t aware) to force her views on everyone and, as a non-expert, shouldn’t be leading the charge on the issue.

After hundreds of comments surfaced on Twitter and elsewhere, Bundchen softened her stance in a comment on her blog. “It’s unfortunate that in an interview sometimes things can seem so black and white,” she said. “I am sure if I would just be sitting talking about my experiences with other mothers, we would just be sharing opinions. I understand that everyone has their own experience and opinions and I am not here to judge.”

“I remember being excited about buying all of that stuff, but I wasn’t really paying for it,” she said.

Now the mother of a kindergarten student at Coggon Elementary School, Felder is experiencing the sticker shock that can come with a new school year.

“Just in school supplies, I’m probably going to spend $40 to $50,” she said. “A backpack alone can set you back $25.”

A fifth grade student shops for school items in July at a Staples store in Menlo Park, Calif. (AP Photo/Paul Sakuma)

A new school year means supplies. Notebooks, folders, pencils — the cost adds up quickly. When you add schools fees to the mix, which average about $50 per student in Eastern Iowa public schools, the wallet takes a hit.

A Gazette study of roughly 50 supply lists for Eastern Iowa school districts found that when it comes to back-to-school shopping, one size does not fit all. Some students are asked to bring glue, others glue sticks. Some schools ask for disinfectant wipes, others want hand sanitizer.

Nicole Shaw, a second grade teacher at Viola Gibson Elementary School in Cedar Rapids, said teachers there work together by grade level to determine school supply needs. Some items are labeled for individual use while others, like crayons or glue, are bundled for community use.

“It seems to make them last longer,” Shaw said.

Some teachers opt for community supplies as a way to build community in the classroom.

“Some of the sharing of supplies came along when there was a big push for cooperative learning,” said Mary Ellen Maske, executive administrator of elementary education for the Cedar Rapids school district. “We want the kids to be focused on learning and not worried about who has more crayons in their box.”

This isn’t as big of an issue in the middle and high schools. Students rarely contribute to a ‘classroom closet’ of supplies. They typically buy notebooks, folders and pens in the upper grades. Specialized supplies, such as a protractor or music stand, depend on the student’s classes.

Rachel Meyer, a social studies teacher at Washington Junior High School in Washington, Iowa, has refined her supply list over the years. “I see what the kids have and what they need for other classes,” she said.

This year’s list includes a notebook, preferably three-subject because students take a lot of notes, a folder or binder and colored pencils. Pens and pencils are a given.

Meyer also added Kleenex® to the list.

“I know it sound ridiculous, but junior high kids go through crazy amounts of Kleenex®,” she said.

Facial tissue has been a school supply staple for some time, but today’s non-traditional supplies include items such as dry-erase markers.

Maske calls it a sign of the times.

“We have whiteboards in many of our classrooms,” she said.

In most cases, Maske said, students have individual whiteboards. The teacher asks a question, the students write down their answer, and a quick show of the boards shows who understands the lesson and who doesn’t.

But even that instructional learning tool could go the way of chalkboards as more schools install interactive whiteboards.

Technology plays a big role in back-to-school shopping. Already, flash drives are on several Eastern Iowa schools’ supply lists.

Despite the items students are expected to have when school begins later this month, educators say they understand the financial impact can be a burden.

“We do encourage supplies to be used again,” Maske said.

Educators also stress buying only what students need at this time.

How can you travel with kids, help them enjoy the experience and keep the peace? Jennifer Cira, director of the Parent Education Consortium at the Grant Wood Area Education Agency; Beula Dvorak, director of early childhood and parenting programs for the Young Parents Network; and Amy Bruner, child care programs manager for HACAP, hosted a live chat on the topic today, generating lots of good ideas.

Replay the live chat below!

Diana Stahle, Teresa Krone, and Lori Smith, Linn County Public Health nursing staff, took questions from Parenting Ain’t Easy users from 11 a.m. to noon today.

Replay their live chat below.

The website is called “Becky & Jeremy’s Exciting Adoption Adventure,” created by a Haverford, Pa., couple to capture a once-in-a-lifetime odyssey to bring home a son from Kazakhstan as well as the joys of raising a first child.

But what has happened so far to Becky Compton, Jeremy Meyer, and the 16-month-old they call Noah Aldanysh Compton-Meyer in the mountain-ringed city of Taraz has been anything but routine.

It is there, about 6,350 miles from home, that Meyer, 40, and Compton, 39, have spent most of the last 7 ½ months as Noah learned to walk, ate his first banana — and became a pawn in a battle with Kazakh officials who have blocked what the couple expected to be a routine adoption.

Compton, a psychology professor at Haverford College, remains in Taraz, spending three hours a day with Noah at an orphanage while fighting the Kazakhstan bureaucracy. Her husband, a labor lawyer with a Center City Philadelphia firm, returned four weeks ago to an empty house on Haverford’s campus and the possibility that Noah might never arrive at the freshly painted, toy-filled room that has been waiting for him for nearly a year.

“It was incredibly hard to leave,” Meyer said. “I may never see him again. That’s horrifying.”

Since January, government officials in the region have abruptly rejected adoptions by seven foreign families — another is pending — leaving in limbo the families and the 10 orphans they seek to adopt. The families call them the “Taraz Ten.”

Besides the growing resistance of many countries to giving up their children to foreign adoptions, the much-publicized death in January of tabloid celebrity Casey Johnson may have played a role, adoption advocates speculate. The fast-living heiress had adopted a daughter from the Taraz orphanage where Noah lives.

“Attitudes toward international adoptions are changing, absolutely,” said Leonette Boiarski of the Pearl S. Buck Welcome House, the Perkasie, Pa., adoption agency that arranged the boy’s adoption. “Countries want to be able to take care of their children.”

Meyer and Compton were hopeful when they set out for sparsely populated Kazakhstan on Dec. 16.

They were encouraged by the country’s reputation for treating its orphans well. As recently as 2008, about 380 Kazakhstan orphans had been adopted by Americans. Boiarski said Welcome House began working with the country in January 2007 and had completed three adoptions when Meyer and Compton arrived.

The process was expected to take roughly two months. Typically, the family arrives in Kazakhstan and begins two weeks of bonding with a child, followed by a court hearing within a month or so.

Meyer and Compton were shown three children. The second they met was 9-month-old Aldanysh. Though he was undernourished and barely able to hold up his head, Meyer said, “it was love at first sight.”

“It’s hard to put into words,” Compton said. “I think because he was fairly small, there was a protective instinct. … He also seemed very alert and curious even as a young infant. … I felt a responsiveness.”

They were able to visit the boy, whom they named Noah, for two hours a day. “We brought toys,” Meyer said. “Early on he grabbed things and flung them around.”

The couple also got to bond with several other couples — American, Canadian, and German — waiting to adopt. They filled the rest of the day — “the other 22,” they called those long hours — by trading books or DVDs with the other families or warming noodles on the hot plate in their hotel room. They blogged about their odd experiences, such as buying a donkey for a local family.

The legal process moved forward slowly. Meyer said that through 2009, no international adoptions had been rejected in the Zhambyl region, and that there had been no reason to expect things would be different.

On Jan. 4, Johnson, the pharmaceutical heiress, died of diabetes complications, leaving behind her 3-year-old Kazakh daughter, Ava-Monroe. News reports revealed her drug history as well as her homosexuality, which is cause in Kazakhstan for denying an adoption.

Then in March, a couple from York, Pa., was accused of murdering the 7-year-old boy they had adopted from Russia, and in April, a Tennessee mother pinned a note on her adopted 7-year-old and sent him unattended on a flight back to Russia.

The climate for international adoption seemed to change overnight, even as Noah celebrated his first birthday March 26 and started hitting developmental milestones.

“One day we went to pick him up, and he was standing,” Meyer said with a father’s pride.

But on May 14, the municipal court rejected the adoption, saying the orphanage had not shown Noah to enough local families — there had been two — before making him available to foreigners, as required by law, according to the court record.

To Compton and Meyer, it seemed that they, and worse, Noah, were being penalized for someone else’s error. They said that the law does not state how many local families must first be approached, and that they had been told that two or three was normal.

Several calls to the Kazakh Embassy were not returned.

While adoptions are progressing normally in other parts of the country, no new applications are being taken while Kazakhstan implements the Hague Adoption Convention, an international agreement to safeguard international adoptees, said Welcome House.

A State Department spokesman called the Hague Convention, which prevents the abduction or sale of children and emphasizes local adoptions, “the most important change in international adoption.”

Compton and Meyer, now on their second appeal, said they would fight all the way to the Kazakh Supreme Court if necessary.

That could take months. Compton needs to return to the United States in August for a week when her visa expires, the first time both will be away from the boy for more than a day.

“He’s bonded with us,” Meyer said. “He cries when we leave him. … Honestly, I think he’s going to forget me.”

Home in Haverford, he tries not to walk past the “depressing empty baby room,” with its blue walls, bookshelf filled with stuffed animals and bright new toys, a stack of baby clothes that Noah is fast outgrowing, and a quilted ark handed down from his wife’s late grandmother.

But the couple is resolved not to give up, even if Kazakhstan’s highest court rules against them. Said Compton by phone from Kazakhstan, “We’re committed to him like any parent is committed to his child.”