I’m spoiled and I know it.  I sat and watched my small girl play softball tonight. She pitched for the very first time.  She was nervous.

And by ‘nervous’, I do mean scared out of her eight-year-old mind. This was her first time taking the mound. She stretched tall, circled, snapped and followed through from her shoulder.  A girl’s softball pitch certainly doesn’t appear to be the most natural of motions, but she did it.  She threw balls and a few strikes.

But even without feeling as though she was ‘perfect’, or even doing as well as she wanted, she stuck with it, finished the inning and met my eyes with a smile as she entered the dugout. That’s a version of success I will take every time.

Last night, I watched my small dude play his first game of the season.  His team rounded the bases time and again, Coop running up to my chair, ‘Mom… did you see?  I got a single for you and a double for Delaney?’

It is so easy to take these small moments for granted. My small people are happy. They are doing something they adore. And they are healthy.

They get the food and vitamins they need to give them the energy to run, to bat, to catch and to make the throw from shortstop to first.

I suppose you don’t need me to tell you it isn’t that way everywhere, but I’m going to tell you anyway.  And I’m going to tell you because with a simple click, you can do a little something about it. Vitamin Angels is a non-profit organization that connects children under the age of five with the essential nutrients they need.  These nutrients help their young immune systems fight infectious diseases.  This in turn gives them the opportunity to lead meaningful and productive lives (not to mention enjoy the benefit of good health).

Amazingly, it only takes 25 cents to provide a child with vitamin A and antiparasitics for a year. That means for 1 dollar, we can provide a child with vitamin A during the most vulnerable years of their life. Here is where you come in…. Puritan’s Pride, a company I am proud to be working with, is running a ‘Like and Do Good’ Facebook Campaign (fits right in with my ‘Give Good, Get Good’, RIGHT?).  For every ‘like’, they will dedicate $1 to Vitamin Angels.  To date, they have raised over $12-thousand dollars – with a goal of hitting $25-thousand dollars.

Vitamin Angels is working to reach 25 million children in the U.S. and around the world.  For children under the age of  five, a simple dose of vitamin A every six months can reduce child mortality rates by 24% and the risk of early signs of blindness caused by vitamin A deficiency by 68%. What astonishes me is that vitamin A seems like such a basic need – something I never evern worried my children would lack and yet it can cause such problems in our world’s smallest ones.

I love the idea that we can do this together.

More parents deserve the joy of watching their children run, jump and play as I do mine.  And for something as simple as a hopping over to another page and ‘liking’ a program that is doing such good work?  I think you can do it, right? Visit Vitamin Angels to learn more and head to Puritan’s Pride’s Facebook page for a quick like and to add your $1 (remember – all you are doing is clicking ‘like’) so more children can receive the essential nutrients they need.

I have faith in you.

Disclosure: I have a working relationship with Puritan’s Pride, but am truly impressed by the work Vitamin Angels does and am happy to share their mission with you.  As you know, my ‘Give Good, Get Good’ mission is incredibly important to me, so all thoughts and opinions expressed both in this post and on this site are mine and mine alone.