They just don't get it
Since Logan has been diagnosed with his food allergies, I've never had any issues with how other people deal with it, as in, I've never expected my friends or MOMS Club in general to cater to Logan's allergies. If there was a function with unsafe foods, I would always make sure to bring safe options for him to eat. Some of our friends have been very thoughtful & have made sure to make egg-free cookies or whatnot for Logan to eat. While I never expected them to do this, nor ever asked that people make safe foods at functions (just requested recipes so I could make sure what was OK), it was great that people understood where we were coming from. I wish it was that way with family.

Bill's parents are visiting this week & as usual, we've been eating many meals with them. One of those meals was out at a restaurant, making it easy for me to find foods that Logan can eat. The others, not so much.

Saturday night after dinner, we all came over to our house to show off the new place. What I didn't know & what nobody told me was that we were going to celebrate all of our March birthday's (Aunt Ju-Ju's, Bill's & mine) as Bill's family usual does, by eating McDonald's birthday cake. "Logan's going to have to skip out on the cake because there's egg in it. Nobody told me about it, so I don't have any safe cake made for him", I said somewhat frustrated. "Oh. I didn't even think about that", Aunt Ju-Ju said & we decided not to eat the cake at all rather than make Logan eat a granola bar while we all ate chocolate & brightly colored frosting.

This morning they had breakfast (eggs, sausage, toast, etc) while Logan & I went to the gym instead. It was a good thing too, because Logan couldn't eat anything other than the toast (& he would have had contact hives from the eggs). Then while we were playing with the kids at the bounce house this afternoon, Bill said that his mom was going to make sloppy joe's for dinner. "OK, I'll make Logan a safe dinner because there's garlic in the tomato sauce. He can't have it". Grandma L pretty much rolled her eyes & walked away after I said this.

While I don't expect the rest of the world to cater to Logan's food allergies, I do expect family to. Especially if someone is going to make a meal for the family, I would hope that they would make something safe for Logan to eat...SO HE CAN EAT WITH US AS A FAMILY. Living day to day with someone who has food allergies isn't super easy & your meal plans are limited unless you can be creative in the kitchen. However, nobody from Bill's family has asked me for a list of foods & spices that Logan can't have. They've never made an effort to make sure there are safe foods for him to eat. His food allergies aren't a big secret & we ran into this same experience over the holidays during their last visit (pizza & the same cake for Grandpa L's birthday). It's like they don't even care.

I always make sure Logan has something safe to eat wherever we go, but I'm his mom & that's my job - to make sure his health is protected as best I can. I wish the rest of the family gave him the same consideration. Instead of saying, "We're going to have this & that for dinner" only to find out that Logan can't eat any of it, it would be great if they ASKED, "We're thinking about having such & such for dinner. Can Logan eat this? How can we make it so he can eat it?". Is this really too much to ask?

Since Logan is only two, he really doesn't understand that he's eating a different meal than the rest of the family. He's too busy running around & playing with his toys to care about what's on his plate. But as he gets older, he will start to catch on to this & I don't want him to feel "different" in his own family or excluded. If this keeps up, we'll probably have to excuse ourselves from home cooked meals with them, unless I make it (which I'm sure won't go over too well) or until they actually start taking Logan's food allergies more seriously.