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 …

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 …

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 …

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 …

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 …

Somewhere along the line, the 100th Day of School became an “event” right up there with Halloween and Valentine’s Day. OK, maybe it’s not on par with Halloween because there are no cool costumes, but …

It’s been Boots and my dirty little secret for the past few months.
Every time we go to Starbucks, just the two of us, we gorge. We order cake or brownies or cookies, turbo-charging our caffeine …

Yes, I’m paying $9 a bag for organic  hamster food – double the normal cost, and $9 was the sale price. Yes, I’m ordering it online because I can’t find it locally. And, yes, I’m …

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 …

Times like this, I am so glad Al Gore invented the Internet. How else would I know that, as the parent of an allergic child, I should find a large closet and hide there until …

Want to kick off a cat fight? Confine hundreds of people in a cramped, narrow tube 30,000 feet above the ground and put them in proximity to something they can’t stand.
In the case of Southwest …

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 …

Here’s a concern that had never occurred to me as a parent of child with food allergies because I’ve been spoiled by our school’s concerned, considerate reaction in dealing with Big Guy’s peanut allergy this …

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 …

Next to “bop brother over the head” and baseball, “pretend I’m not allergic” is Big Guy’s favorite game.
Boots will sit with their toy cash register as his brother orders at McDonald’s. “I’ll have chicken nuggets, …

Allergy-wise, it’s been a disastrous weekend.
We showed up at a birthday party to see bowls of peanuts among the snacks. It freaked Big Guy out, but I’ve been trying to teach him to avoid rather …

Everyone’s entitled to an opinion.
Everyone should be obligated to check out the facts before forming half-cocked opinions.
Unfortunately, that’s not what happened in an opinion piece posted this week at investors.com under the headline, The War …

This is Big Guy’s life:

He’s had cake at a birthday party only once other than at a celebration for him or his brother. And that was because a friend took extra pains to include him.
For …

I’m near the end of five years of diapers — Little Guy’s still on precautionary Pull-Ups at night but he won’t be for much longer — and thought that would mean I could wipe wipes …

A friend passed along this forum posting today, from the files of “things you don’t think of until everything’s screwed up.”
A mom whose first-grader is contact-allergic to peanut — that means he can have a …

I’d never understood the primal maternal instinct to claw out another kid’s eyes — until yesterday.
Big Guy’s Mommy Day Care shuttle arrived at his school before he had finished lunch, so I sat down with …

Saturday night was one of those “what was I thinking” moments as I stood in a grocery store after work and eyed jar after jar of nuts.

My mission: Big Guy’s latest allergy tests were negative for almond, and I’d promised him I’d bring some when I came home.

I, of course, had an ulterior motive. He’s been off cheese lately and agrees to eat meat only every third day or so, which means I constantly worry that he’s not getting enough protein. Nuts also are a good source of Vitamin E, and his pediatrician recently put him on a foul-tasting Vitamin E supplement in hopes of easing his chronic stuffiness. Plus he has a world-class sweet tooth, and I was eager to introduce him to a non-sugary snack option.

Yet, as I stood

Big Guy wants a dog. No, strike that. Big Guy longs for a dog with all the passion a kid can muster at not quite 5.

Big Guy’s preschool friends all are leaving him and he frets about making new ones in kindergarten.

Big Guy’s mom — me! — is freaking out because he’ll no longer lunch at preschool, where one teacher checks 10 kids’ lunches and keeps peanut-eaters at bay. Instead, he’ll be thrown into the big, bad grade school cafeteria, where hundreds of kids dine in shifts.

The solution: Peanut dog, that lovable companion and protector trained to sniff out the tiniest amounts of peanut before they can set off an allergy attack. He’s a pet! He’s a friend! He keeps Mommy from going mad with worry!

There are those who think the

Originally publish Feb. 20, 2008, thehive.modbee.com

This recipe is adapted from “The Kid-Friendly Food Allergy Cookbook” It’s a pretty good book to have if you’re dealing with multiple allergies or odd-ball issues, such as a garlic allergy, that force you to cook things no normal working parent would consider making from scratch.

Chewy granola bars
1 c. butter
¾ c. brown sugar
½ c. sugar – I cut it to ¼ and might try to eliminate it.
2 tbl corn or maple syrup
4 c. oats or buckwheat flakes
1 c. coconut – I skip this because Big Guy thinks coconut is worms
1/3 c. chopped nuts – I skip this, too, because we don’t know if Big Guy is allergic
1 c. chocolate chips and/or dried fruit. I’ve been using just chocolate chips lately
1. Grease a jelly roll pan

PRODUCT: I.M. Healthy Soy Nut Butter
PROBLEM IT SOLVES: Peanut butter substitute. It’s also gluten-free.
COST: $5 or $6
AVAILABLE LOCALLY: Raley’s
REVIEW: Yuck, yuck, yuck. It comes in several varieties, none of which I like, though the crunchy version is almost palatable once you get used to it.
I tried I.M. Healthy because I haven’t been able to find my favorite faux peanut butter – the sunflower seed Sunbutter – locally. The first bite of Sunbutter feels a little funny in your mouth, but beyond that, it tastes dang close to the real deal. Looks like I’m going to be buying it online again, because I just cannot tolerate I.M. Healthy.

Copyright 2007 Debra Legg. All rights reserved