I came home and logged onto Twitter where I found the following message, "Just got a call from school—a kid was suspended 4 trying to touch my daughter’s face w/ peanut butter when he knows she is deathly allergic ." It was immediately followed by a non-related tweet about some high school cheerleaders who hazed a girl with a peanut allergy by covering her in peanut butter. And just earlier this week, I commented on an episode of Smash where one character slips peanuts to a peanut allergic star to get her off the production.

My son has had food allergies his entire life. Thankfully, he has outgrown allergies to dairy, eggs, and soy. In fact, we were able to dye Easter Eggs for the first time this year. But the peanut and tree nut allergies impact his life. He sits at a special table in the cafeteria in school. He typically can’t eat the cake served at a birthday party – we always offer to bring cupcakes just for him. Halloween holds a special kind of horror for me, and a disappointment for him, as we pull out more than half his candy for nuts or potential nut contamination. He can’t order freely from the menu in a restaurant, and he often can’t enjoy the complimentary bread/chips/whatever that comes out before the meal. There are restaurants he can’t even go to because they have loose peanuts everywhere. We buy tickets to the peanut free baseball games. As fortunate as we are that peanut allergies in particular have a lot of awareness, part of that reason is because peanut oil gets on everything and isn’t as easy to wipe off. It’s scary stuff.

We had one person at our meeting today celebrating that she could finally pack a peanut butter and jelly lunch for her child to bring to school because he’s only allergic to tree nuts. She might as well have said that she was thrilled that she could send him into school with a gun. It’s unlikely that he’ll shoot anyone with it, but if he does, they could die.

It’s not practical at this point to ban peanuts (or other high-allergy foods) from schools or anywhere else. And I know that my child needs to learn to manage his allergy. In honor of Food Allergy Awareness Week, I’d like to make a few wishes, though. I wish that we’d get better about teaching our (non-allergic) kids about food allergies and just how serious they are. I wish that adults would get a grip and stop insisting that their kids have a "right" to a peanut butter & jelly sandwich for every meal when it means risking another child’s life. And I wish that Hollywood would take food allergies seriously (with serious repercussions) and avoid using them in trite plotlines. Lastly, I wish that we could get consistent and clear labeling for food and health and beauty products so we could all make educated decisions.

We’re talking about the lives of the people we love.

Related posts:

1. Fun Food Allergy Chats with Lori Sandler and The Motherhood
2. Healthy Babies: Taking Things for Granted
3. New Directions – Food Allergies Blog and Chat

Make your own digital scrapbook

Disclosure: We attended the Disney Social Media Moms Celebration at our own cost. Lodging, park tickets, and other amenities were included in the registration fee at a significantly reduced rate.

Related posts:

1. We’re Going to Disney World for Disney Social Media Moms
2. Disney Social Media Moms – My Recap
3. Social Media and the Myth of the Perfect Parent

We held off telling the kids until I was just too excited to wait another moment. It was Easter afternoon and we had just enjoyed dinner together. We had started with a really nice day and everyone was in a good mood…

I don’t know what I expected, but that wasn’t it. And if you were busy watching Bug try to figure out when we were going and how long we’d be there, watch it again with an eye on LadyBug.

Disclosure: We are attending the Disney Social Media Moms Celebration at our own cost. Lodging, park tickets, and other amenities are included in the registration fee at a significantly reduced rate.

Related posts:

1. Disney Social Media Moms Celebration 2012 Family Highlights
2. Disney Social Media Moms – My Recap
3. Social Media and the Myth of the Perfect Parent

After the ultrasound, I asked to use the bathroom. When they brought me to the door, I hesitated, but it was once I was inside with the door closed that I started to hyperventilate. I remembered that room. I remembered finding the first of many blood clots in the toilet due to my sub-chorionic hematoma. I remember yelling that I had just lost the baby. And I remember my aunt, a nurse at the hospital, hugging me and assuring me that it was going to be OK.

I took a moment to calm my breathing while staring in the mirror at the person I’ve become since that day. A mom, among other things. And then I closed my eyes and pictured Bug’s face, proof that my nightmares from the past had not come true. I thought of Bug and LadyBug, playing together, fighting together, testing my patience. I think I healed a little more on that day by unintentionally facing that place, although I hope I never stand in that room again.

Later, as I went to visit my mom who was recuperating in a room upstairs, I passed the old maternity ward where both kids were born. That made me smile. Those were the good memories. Seeing my mom, who was one of the few people who really understood the trauma of my first pregnancy, brought tears to me eyes. I think they were, in part, tears of relief that I don’t need to revisit that time again.

Thinking back on both the stress of my pregnancies and the anxiety of the hospital visit last week, I want to remind people again to not take healthy pregnancies and babies for granted. It’s certainly of no help to anyone to spend your pregnancy worried about all of the things that can go wrong, but I do urge people to notice the things that go well. And to truly celebrate hearing the heartbeat for the first time, seeing your baby via ultrasound, and each healthy check-up you have. Enjoy those moments for yourself, but also for those who can’t have them.

Related posts:

1. Mom and Son Journey to NYC – Taking on the Big Apple, Quirky Style
2. Kicking Off Healthy Eating with The Fresh Diet
3. Wordless Wednesday–One of My Favorite Things of Summer

I promised LadyBug that we could make Pinkalicious cupcakes so one afternoon, I pulled out some cake mix (no from-scratch baking with kids involved – I’ve drawn the line there) and we set to work. I usually don’t use my Kitchen Aid mixer for cake mix, but I thought it would help mixing in the food coloring. By the way, use the gel food coloring as it doesn’t add a lot of moisture to your batter. Not a huge deal for a few drops, but just a good tip to remember for when you want deeper colors.

We ended up with this lovely shade of pink. I didn’t want to get too red, but also needed to counteract the yellow of the cake mix (yes, I could have chosen white, but the yellow is a better flavor!).

LadyBug was a big help doling out the cupcake liners. We used bright pink and some with a funky pattern in pink and other fun colors.

After the cupcakes baked, we went to the bus stop to get Bug. LadyBug told him that we had baked pink cupcakes and he stopped in the street and burst into tears. All the way home he whined and cried that we had selfishly made pink cupcakes and not red, which is his favorite. He insisted that he never ever gets anything special (despite a trip with me to Chuck E. Cheese the day before without his sister). He howled about the HORROR of pink cupcakes. I suggested that he might just not get to eat one anyway.

Eventually, Bug came around. I mean, he’s not one to turn down a cupcake of any color. I offered to frost his cupcake with chocolate or plain white vanilla, but his anti-pink protest was over and he decided that it would be fun to have pink, too. He even used pink sprinkles (with some red ones thrown in).

The Pinkalicious cupcakes were a big hit. I might have even had one or two (or more).

Related posts:

1. Sugar and Spice and Everything Pink
2. Pink and Purple Guns
3. In Which LadyBug Turns Two

Spot it! is a set of round durable cards with eight illustrations on them. The pictures are primarily everyday objects like a baby bottle, cheese, ladybug, and dinosaur. Each card has exactly one illustration in common with every other card. Honestly, that boggles my mind, but if you want to do the math behind that, you’ll be practicing combinatorics. We will leave that for another day and just talk some more about the game, which has been a hit in our house.

Spot it! from Blue Orange games comes in a small, round storage tin and includes 55 cards and instructions for a few variations of the game. The basic premise is to find the one image that is the same between two cards. It sounds easy, but I assure you that there are times you’ll be insisting that there is no match. You can try out a demo of Spot it! on their site. Let me know how you do!

I mentioned earlier that I like games that are fun for playing with people of a range of ages and Spot it! is just right for that. I was able to play with six-year-old Bug and had a lot of fun. Later we added four year-old LadyBug. She had a slightly more difficult time finding images and in some cases, knowing what they were called. She did well, but not well enough to make it a challenge to play against her. I created a variation of one of the game variations and she and Bug raced against the clock. I could see doing an ultra-difficult memory game with the cards, too. There are a lot of options.

Spot it! retails for $13.99, although it is available for less. I also noticed that they have other versions of the game, including an NHL deck (hey, Big Guy) and a Junior version that only has six images per card.

Blue Orange games produces an array of games from quality materials. They have a strong commitment to creating eco friendly products and lessening their environmental impact.

Disclosure: We received a copy of Spot it! for review purposes. There was no promise of a positive review and the opinions in this post are my own.

Related posts:

1. FlipOut–A Family Game Review
2. Casual Games and a Pictureka! Museum Mayhem Review
3. Gamewright = Great Games for Family Game Night

After the standard welcome from Mickey, Minnie and the gang, the show kicks off with The Princess and the Frog. The costumes were gorgeous and the music upbeat, but this is my least favorite of the Disney princess movies. Bug is also terrified of the Shadow Man and has been ever since he first laid eyes on him in the movie. We spent the first act trying to calm him down. LadyBug, on the other hand, was entranced. She loves the skating and costumes.

The next act was Cinderella. My kids enjoyed the goofiness of the step sisters and were impressed by Cinderella’s transformation from rags to ball gown. I personally enjoyed the ball scene, but I can be sappy like that. I think the entire audience enjoyed singing along to "Bibbidi Bobbidi Boo."

The glimmering star of the show was the re-telling of Tangled, which is probably my favorite princess movie of all time. I’m not alone on this opinion, either, as the buzz that rippled through the arena was loudest of all for this act. We enjoyed seeing all of the characters, especially Maximus, who managed to retain all of his spunk and charm in his transition to the ice. But the highlight of this – and the show as a whole – was the aerial silk routines performed by Rapunzel and Flynn Rider. They spun and soared through the air on golden silk cloth and it was beautiful. My kids were captivated and even my hard-to-impress, not-remotely-romantic husband thought it was pretty cool.

Toward the end of the Tangled act, they do the lantern scene from the end of the movie. I’ve seen this particular part twice as it also happened in Treasure Trove, but it brought me nearly to tears both times. They bring a little girl out to the edge of the ice and she hands Rapunzel a lighted lantern. Rapunzel and Flynn Rider launch the lantern to the sky and the whole arena sparkles with glowing lanterns. I love the magic of it, but moves me most is the special moment it creates for the lucky little girl who gets a hug from Rapunzel and sets off the lantern storm.

Dare to Dream is my favorite Disney on Ice in a long time, although it’s partly due to the fact that my son was able to calm down enough for me to relax as well. And although it’s heavy on the princess-vibe, there is plenty in it for boys as well!

Disclosure: We received complimentary tickets to the show for review purposes. There was no promise of a positive review and the opinions contained in this post are my own.

Related posts:

1. Disney On Ice Presents Treasure Trove–Magic, Tears, Princesses, and More
2. You are NOT the Fun Police

LadyBug loved the bread (which I made from scratch) and the kielbasa. She wanted nothing to do with the cheese!

Bug tried the cheese and decided that he wanted “just a little” on his food. In other words, he’d just touch the food to the cheese and enjoy it like that. I insisted that he wasn’t actually getting any cheese, but it made him happy. Here’s an early shot with lots of cheese:

Don’t even ask about our dinner attire. Or lack thereof.

Related posts:

1. LadyBug, Vomit and Christmas Cheer
2. The Great HEXBUG Nano Party
3. In Which LadyBug Turns Two

You may suspect that I avoid going to the doctor because I’m afraid of bad news. If so, you don’t know me very well. This is the girl who, upon completing her first Judy Blume book, insisted on a trip to the doctor to be checked for scoliosis. As it turned out, I did have a mild case and spent the next year or two or whatever being photographed half naked all in the name of science. That probably makes it sound worse than it was, but for an adolescent, it was hardly a high point. The truth is that I’m a proactive worrier. Maybe that’s called being a hypochondriac. Anyway, the point is… if something is wrong, I want to know what it is and what I do to fix it.

And then Bug came along. Before he was even born, he was dealing with specialists. We had additional ultrasounds, maternal-fetal specialist consultations, and quite a few trips to the ER. And after he was born, it was like "Parade of the –Ists." He had things you would never think about. He had things you’ve never heard of. I couldn’t even make this stuff up. Before he was one, he had seen (or was seeing) a dermatologist, opthamologist, physical therapist, psychologist (ok, maybe she was for me), allergist, and some sort of developmental expert. The kid had to have surgery on his tear ducts. And then I found out I was pregnant with LadyBug. At just a year later, I was considered "an older mom," resulting in extra tests and appointments. Plus, I had problems with that pregnancy, too, which added even more special attention. She had hearing loss. Sort of. And that meant repeated visits to the audiologist where I had to try to convince a squirmy infant to fall asleep with probes in her ears. You can imagine how well that went. And then she needed to see an orthopedist. Seriously. Later we added a urologist to the mix, as well as another developmental person. We’ve worked with an OT and a speech therapist, too. I just want to point out here that Bug is only six and, other than Bug’s food allergies, they’re pretty healthy kids.

I share all of this in part because it amuses me, but mainly to explain why I let my own doctor’s visits slide, even though I knew I shouldn’t have. I had a scare in the past, shortly after LadyBug was born and knew I should stay on top of it. I was simply tired of waiting rooms and insurance papers (yes, that IS my husband, even though we don’t have the same last name) and blood draws (UGH) and follow-up visits. The last medical abnormality we had just pushed me over the edge, I think. I stopped scheduling almost anything. My kids’ physicals are up-to-date, but did fall behind schedule (bah. physical, schmysical – certainly one of the 10 other doctors would have noticed if anything was wrong) and they haven’t even seen a dentist. Yeah, I know. I’m an awful mom and my kids’ teeth will fall out and they’ll hate me forever. But at least they’ll be alive, and hearing, and walking, and talking, and all of that. [Note: It's on my To-Do list, right after my own EKG]

Anyway. I called my doctor and asked for an appointment. "When do you want to come?" the receptionist asked. I wanted to answer "NOW" but managed to come up with a reasonable time and date. And then I stopped sleeping through the night because all I could do was worry. I had finally stopped worrying (for one brief moment) about my kids and started to worry about me, which was actually scarier, because I KNEW they were healthy. I also have to blame this partly on the Grey’s Anatomy marathon I’ve been taking part in, which has me imagining all of the many ways I could be dying and not even know. That and the heart palpitations, which I might blame on Grey’s Anatomy stress as well.

I met my doctor for the first time (long story) and gave her a long list of complaints and concerns. I updated my medical history with some scary new stuff. And then I waited for the bad news. As you can probably imagine, the news wasn’t that bad at the appointment. She didn’t find a tumor the size of a basketball or anything. I left the appointment with the longest laundry lists of tests and labs and yadda yadda yadda. Who knew that your 40th birthday was the day you suddenly became old? I’ve got an order for a Mammogram, Colonoscopy (joy), EKG, and a whole host of things involving blood and other bodily byproduct. Actually, the list is a bit freaky.

You might imagine that I’d be even more stressed as I wait for more tests and test results. Uhm, if so, you probably skipped the second paragraph. The truth is that I feel somewhat better. I’m anxiously hoping for good news across the board, but right now, I’m feeling more peaceful just for taking the step to know. There is power in knowledge.

I hope that you have been rolling your eyes at my sheer stupidity for not staying on top of each and every doctor visit. But if not, please take a moment to make the call for yourself. Call your doctor. Call a local clinic. Just call and get yourself checked out. It is scary to think that something might be wrong. On the other hand, if you can stay on top of your health, you significantly increase their ability to fix anything that does go wrong.

In the meantime, please send some good vibes my way…

No related posts.

I thought we left the house with plenty of time, but traffic getting into the parking garage was sloooow. By the time we got inside, picked up our tickets, and made our way to our seats, the opening music was starting. I zipped out to pick up food because there is no bigger disaster for LadyBug than to be underfed. Plus, she lives for popcorn. In all of the hurry, I dropped the ball as a mom. It was the day after a very busy Christmas. We didn’t arrive early enough for the kids to acclimate. I didn’t bring earplugs or a hat or anything for Bug. I had no idea where our seats would be and I simply didn’t prepare. And then I left right as the fanfare began.  By the time I got back, Bug was curled up in his aunt’s lap and tears were still streaming down his face. In the midst of my attempt to have a fun day with the kids, I managed a big parenting fail.

The show itself was wonderful, at least what I saw of it. It was a celebration of Disney animation from Snow White and the Seven Dwarves (or the “Seven Doors” according to Bug when he was younger) all the way to the 50th animated feature, Tangled. There were so many different characters… Peter Pan, the Tick-Tock Croc, Captain Hook, Smee, Tiana, Rapunzel, Flynn Rider, Simba, Nala, Scar, Rafiki, Jasmine, Aladdin, the Genie, Tinker Bell… and the list goes on. There was flying, stunts, humor, music, and plenty of magical surprises. LadyBug was captivated. She couldn’t take her eyes off the ice and the look on her face when Tinkerbell arrived was priceless. She would have stayed all day. If you have the chance to see this show, I highly recommend it. It was one of my favorites.

I’d like to say that Bug recovered, but that’s not really the case. He had dealt with a stomach bug the week before and his stomach was hurting him off and on throughout the holiday. He wasn’t really sick, but I think all of the excitement and anxiety and running around was keeping him from getting back to 100%. That, combined with the noise (or perhaps it was caused by the noise) really kept him from really enjoying himself. It’s too bad, because  I think he otherwise would have loved it.

We’ve been invited to Disney On Ice presents Dare to Dream over February break. I, of course, wouldn’t miss it. But this time, I’ll be armed with earplugs for my little guy who apparently hasn’t totally outgrown his sound sensitivity. Then again, I have threatened to bump him for one of his female cousins since he complained loudest over the princesses…

P.S. I’ll have a giveaway coming up for that very, very soon!

Disclosure: We received complimentary tickets to Disney On Ice Presents Treasure Trove for review purposes. There was no promise of a positive review and the opinions contained in this post are my own.

Related posts:

1. Disney on Ice Presents Dare to Dream
2. You are NOT the Fun Police
3. Jiko – Grown-Up Food at Disney World