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In two weeks, a friend and I are planning a special lunch to celebrate our kids’ independence.  My youngest will have completed a week of kindergarten by then, and her only child will be entering his first week of college.

Despite the serious separation anxiety gripping our house right now, I have it easier. I don’t have to worry about the temptations of college life.

Since my oldest daughter has been in daycare, we’ve been dreaming of that day when she entered kindergarten and we escaped the death clutch daycare has had on our bank account. Oh, the things my husband and I could do with those funds – the Time Life Best of Soul Train DVD collection, zombie lawn ornaments, PajamaJeans for every day of the week. Or we could do something really crazy – like stop paying for gas with spare change.

But as that day creeps closer and closer, we realize that we’ve been so fixated on our financial windfall that we failed to understand we’re pulling our child from the safety of her preschool onto the road of debauchery that begins in elementary school.

In the months leading up to their little one’s arrival, expectant parents are overwhelmed with questions from the miniscule to the monumental.

For parents considering adoption, their questions can be incredibly complex, especially when making the choice to pursue open adoption.

In a baseball town like ours, America’s pastime is woven throughout the patchwork of our kids’ lives.

Every payday, it hits me that as sweet little balls of sunshine my daughters are, they’re also savage little income suckers who drain our checkbook dry.

I don’t feel like we spoil them, but there are those little things like soccer leagues and doctor appointment co-pays that feast like vultures on the last remnants daycare, food and diapers leave behind.

It’s not surprising that according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s annual "Expenditures on Children by Families," which was recently released, a child born in 2010 will cost his or her parents $226,920 over the next 17 years.

The main expenditures reported by the USDA included housing, child care, education, and food. However, I wonder how closely they analyzed those little things that really take the bite out of our budgets. The items at age 20 you never, ever thought you’d be spending your hard earned dollars on:

The power of reality TV came home to me in April, when I attended a special taping of the Style Network docu-series Too Fat for 15: Fighting Back. The stars of the townhall-style session included Ruby Gettinger, making an up-and-down journey from nearly 500 pounds when her Style show began in 2008 to 360 pounds now, and several of the inspiring teens who have been featured on Too Fat for 15.

They converged in the West County YMCA in Chesterfield (along with celebrity moderator Allison Sweeney from The Biggest Loser and a panel of doctors, chefs, trainers, nutritionists and even a Rams football player) to talk about the childhood obesity epidemic. Dozens of overweight and obese children feeling the epidemic first hand were in the audience, and their emotional testimonies and heartfelt questions brought tears to my eyes many times over the course of the afternoon.

Often the one thing holding our daughters back from achieving their dreams is poor self-esteem.