Dear Sports Parents,
The end-of-the-season cupcake cake was beautiful, and it looked delicious. I’m sure 90 percent of the team appreciated your efforts to make the last game special.
We are the 10 percent.
The one player who …

The lack of health-care workers in schools is nothing new.
We saw the impact when Big Guy was in kindergarten and cooled his heels in the office for half a day after a snooty secretary diagnosed …

Until today, I thought “Fight for Your Right to Party” was just an old 80s rock song. I never dreamed that holiday celebrations – or the lack thereof – would draw actual protests.
That was before …

So it turns out that the number of people going to emergency rooms as the result of food allergies might have been dramatically underestimated, according to new research.
Reuters reported this week that an article in …

Mommy I want Santa to bring me that, Boots said as an Easy Bake oven commercial aired.
I ignored him, because Boots wanted virtually everything he saw on TV or in an ad this year. But …

Big Guy was looking over my shoulder last night as I was writing a post about 13-year-old Katelyn Carlson, the peanut-allergic Chicago girl who died from anaphylaxis after a party at school.
He often does that, …

There’s egg-free, and then there’s the kind of egg-free that led Big Guy to puke up his pastries despite a donut shop owner’s assurances that he didn’t use egg. It was true as far as …

We didn’t really have time to stop, and if we did Big Guy would miss his karate class. Still, a promise is a promise, so I let him make the call.
“Yes, yes, YES! Momma, I …

I know I have a blueberry coffee cake recipe … um, somewhere. Where the heck did it go? Aw, never mind. I’ll just Google.
I’m glad I did, because the new one I conjured up went …

I ran across a story this morning about a school district in South Dakota that goes out of its way – to the tune of paying an extra $40 for a case of cookies …

I’d been lucky in my lifetime to have never run into a truly bad doctor. Sure, there was the guy when I was in high school who told me my nose was definitely broken but …

It didn’t really hit Big Guy for almost a full day after I broke the news about his latest allergy test results. He figured it out while we were standing in the food court at …

With an energy level that makes coffee nervous and a comedic style that coaxes even the most reticent into the water, Miss S is the best swim instructor on the planet.
This morning, she also was …

I was there for the preparation but had to leave before the feast began, so I was curious to hear Big Guy’s reaction to the lunch that was part of his end-of-school party.
“Oh. My. God,” …

First, the good news:
Big Guy immediately recognized the Reese’s Cup in his bag of Valentine’s Day bling at school – never mind that the kids weren’t supposed to bring candy and I’d ticked Big Guy …

I did a double cringe when the Valentine’s Day note came home this week from Big Guy’s school: “Due to food allergies, please do not send any candy, cupcakes or food items.”
The first cringe came …

He’s survived solo birthday parties.
He successfully navigated the 100th Day of School, even when a food he can’t eat made a surprise appearance. He told the substitute teacher, and the food disappeared quickly. I’m not …

Mommy, when do I get to have asthma, Boots asked recently.
Maybe never if you’re lucky, I said. I can’t promise that, though. Mawmaw didn’t have asthma until she was in her 50s, so you never …

I hate made-up allergies.
The one that ticked me off the most was from a frequent house guest who would complain that she was allergic to dogs. Hey, guess what lady? I really am allergic to …

A dear friend who’s never had to deal with food allergies laughed at me when I evicted all eggs and egg products from our house after Big Guy’s bout with anaphylaxis five and a half …

I regularly recheck labels on products, even if we’ve been buying them for years, because you never know when ingredients or manufacturing processes are going to change.
It had never occurred to me to check the …

You have a nasty habit of speeding. You know your break-neck tendencies put others’ lives in danger, but you do it anyway.
But then along comes a proposal that would pay you to not speed. Sounds …

They never believed me.
From the time Big Guy started eating solid foods, I insisted that it be done the “right” way – the way doctors recommend for any child, but particularly for one with a …

This one landed in my Twitter stream just as Boots was diving into a bowl of … Cocoa Puffs: “New peanut flour warning for General Mills cereals.”
Luckily, he’s not the child who’s allergic and Big …

A Virginia man with food allergies orders a burger then digs in without checking.
He has a reaction, and now he’s filed a whopper of a suit against Burger King, claiming the sandwich made him sick.
The …

Get rid of a few eggs and evict the peanut butter and before you know it a kid thinks he’s king of the cupboard by the time he’s in kindergarten.
Such was the case with Big …

Talk about good evidence but the wrong assumption.
New test results presented this week at the American Academy of Allergy, Asthma and Immunology’s annual meeting showed that 2 percent of foods without any type of allergy …

There is one, and only one, pizza place we go to in town.
We don’t even go there often, because we’ve cut back drastically on eating out. Still, the guys deserve a treat once in a …