But it's fortified with vitamins and minerals!

I totally love sugary cereal. The best is Captain Crunch, aka Captain Gum Shredder. In some circles I am renown for my ability to eat three bowls in a row before my gums begin to shred and bleed. It's good stuff. It says so on the box.

My love for the Captain has led me to be one of those moms who lets my children pick out Lucky Charms at the store, lick the spoon when I make brownies, eat raw cookie dough with a blithe disregard for the risk of salmonella, and generally treat sugar as a treat that is to be enjoyed in moderation and never demonized.

But then I bought Lauren some Tinker Bell vitamins.

I've been giving the girls gummy-chewy vitamins intermittently all their lives, or at least as long as they were capable of chewing a gummy bear without choking. You know how it is, sometimes we remember, sometimes we don't. They are generally healthy so I don't sweat it. But I recently made a change to Lauren's diet, significantly reducing her milk intake to see if it made a difference with her eczema. I've been hearing for years about the milk/eczema relationship, but her eczema seemed more related to either extreme dryness (winter) or extreme sweatiness (summer), with periods of relative remission in between. While we were on spring break this year she drank just about nothing but water and juice boxes, and I noticed that her eczema had disappeared. I chalked it up to the healing qualities of salt air until a week after we got home and it was BAD. Itchy, red... and she had been drinking milk morning noon and night.

I quit serving her milk. In two days the eczema was gone again. Hmmm.

Her doctor said milk could definitely be the culprit, so if I was going to limit the milk and cheese I needed to be vigilant about a multi-vitamin. She chose the Tinker Bell ones and we went home from the store. That night we opened the fresh bottle, chock-full of sparkling stars, butterflies, wands..... wait. Sparkling? Why are vitamins sparkling?!

BECAUSE THEY ARE COATED WITH SUGAR!

That's right. I have just purchased an entire jar of vitamins that are coated in sugar. And not a little bit of sugar. These things look like they've been coated in glue and pasted with rhinestones.

I went a little nuts, ranting on to the girls about how they better enjoy these vitamins because this was the last time they were EVER getting sugar-coated vitamins (Yeah, Grace got some Hannah Montana ones too. I hate that girl.), I couldn't BELIEVE that they even make sugar coated vitamins, and they darn well better eat them BEFORE they brush their teeth not after, because otherwise they will go to bed and get cavities while they are sleeping.

Then I went downstairs and had a bowl of Captain Crunch.