PARENTING  It’s the kind of sleepy panic that grips you in the middle of the night: Your child has radiation poisoning. First, you let them fall down the stairs, get injured in flag football or ignore a cavity. Then you chose to allay your fears by getting X-rays or a Computerized Tomography scan.
Even that decision can bring up different worries. Will he get cancer? Will I ever have grandchildren? Read More>>

PARENTING  Kim Miller’s business is eyes. In her jobs coordinating surgeries and public relations for Spokane Eye Clinic, she knows the components of an eyeball. She knows how its muscles form, how the light refracts, what happens when eyes form incorrectly and what doctors can do to fix them.
Naturally, she was proactive about her kids’ eye health, having their vision tested as babies and toddlers. Everything checked out OK. But earlier this year, her son Benjamin was struggling in kindergarten.
“His teacher said he was all of a sudden ‘pulling back’ — not participating in story time. But she’d get with him one-on-one, and he had the comprehension,” explains Miller. “Turns out he just couldn’t see the pictures.” Read More>>

SPECIAL SECTION  It begins as innocently as a proud mom handing a gummy bear to a precocious 3-year-old for saying a letter sound correctly. Then — time is short! — dinner via a drive-through on the way to T-ball, and out for ice cream cones to celebrate a win. A week without a timeout? Pizza party!

And suddenly, close to one in four children are overweight. Read More>>

PARENTING  When Spokane resident Stacey Conner was 10 years old, she and her two younger sisters would walk down a dirt road in their English village to the ocean, hunting for heart-shaped rocks they pretended were made by fairies.
“We’d throw them into the water and make wishes,” she says. Read More>>

COVER STORY  Changing the battery in a smoke detector when you set your clock back isn’t enough. Protecting your home from fire now requires more than pushing the test button to hear the reassuring high-pitched squeal that it works. You need to know how it works.
“The most important issue is what [smoke detectors] are made of,” says Jan Doherty, the Spokane Fire Department’s Public Information Officer. Read More>>

COVER STORY  Fire and water. Earth and wind. For ancient Greeks, and the Buddhists before them, these basic elements provided a foundation for contemplating the world. In this special section, we invite you to take a look at how these simple, time-honored concepts can help you in your quest to create a healthier home. Read More>>

SPECIAL SECTION  They’ve got cell phones with GPS systems, pocket-sized digital videogames and 8-gig MP3 players. Old 1980s technology just won’t fly for today’s grade-schoolers: not for toys, and not for crooked teeth. Read More>>

SPECIAL SECTION  When the FDA approved Botox for cosmetic use in 2002, beauty industry spokespeople proclaimed it the “Year of the Botox Party!” So why has it taken until 2009 to get formal invitations to Botox parties here in the Inland Northwest? Some in the business blame the area’s general resistance to national trends, but that’s changing fast. Nearly 200 clients — about 95 percent of them women — now get regular Botox injections at Spokane’s Inland Aesthetics Institute. And for many, there’s nothing wrong with incorporating a little fun into the experience. Read More>>

PARENTING  Tracey, a Spokane mother of three thick-haired children, wrote a short response back to her son’s kindergarten teacher after receiving the most recent official Head Lice Parent Notification Letter from Spokane Public Schools:

“I would rather gnaw off my right hand than have lice in my house again.” Read More>>

PARENTING  Erika Meier knew that when her first child, Megan, started fourth grade, she would be learning about the “biological process of sex,” and she was prepared to answer questions. But now Megan’s 12, headed to middle school and an avid reader of teen fiction. Meier reads her book choices ahead of time to make sure they’re appropriate, and she was stunned by one of the current juvenile bestsellers.

“It dealt with a girl who chose to sleep around, drink and smoke,” says Meier. “And by the second chapter, there was a discussion of oral sex. I was so frustrated. I asked my daughter if she even knew what it was, and she didn’t.” Read More>>

PARENTING  The image of the nursing mother is romantic: a smiling, relaxed woman with a clean baby head nestled at the breast; the only sound, a satisfied suckling. At least, that’s what it’s supposed to look like. Read More>>

COVER STORY  It may be the hardest habit to break: Opting for “cruelty-free” animal products or smaller bunches of lettuce when the other, bigger stuff costs half as much.

Concerns about hormones and pesticide residues tend to diminish when it comes time to fork over more than $5 for a gallon of organic milk or pay twice as much for produce. Read More>>

PARENTING  Aaah, who can resist that “baby” smell — the freshly bathed little bodies in those hooded towels, the peach-fuzzy hair? Sniff it. Is that the 1,4-dioxane or the phthalates?

Yes, in addition to worrying about PVC in plastic toys, and BPA in bottles, we now may need to worry about the bath bubbles. A recent test of top baby shampoos, lotions and body washes found traces of cancer-causing agents. Read More>>

PARENTING  Oversleeping. An unexpected blizzard. Icy roads. A missing glove. A broken binding. A lost ski-rack key. Any of these circumstances can derail an introduction to skiing. Read More>>

PARENTING  It’s like the first smile and first steps, but more terrifying — every parent of a food-allergic child remembers the first allergic reaction.
For Chris Huppin’s then 4-year old, it was a fancy fish entrée. Read More>>