Marilee and I just returned from a 5 day road trip to Richmond, Virginia. We had a packed itinerary–two book readings on Wednesday night, talks to a women's Bible study on Thursday morning and a church forum Thursday night, participation in a "Maker's" series with other artists ...

For those of you who read this blog regularly, you know that Penny started kindergarten two months ago, and you know that we couldn't be more pleased with her situation. With that said, as I've also mentioned, Penny has had a tough time "controlling her hands" and following ...

It's a question William asked me a long time ago, and I've been thinking about the answer ever since. I wrote it up for Lisa Belkin's new blog, Parentlode, at the Huffington Post "Explaining Down Syndrome to My Daughter, and to Myself." My post begins:

A few months back, I mentioned ...

This post is an excuse to a) show you what Penny did at her babysitter's wedding shower this past weekend, which is to say, spend an hour trying on different hats and "walk down the aisle" (her words), stop, twirl, and wait for the applause of the forty or so women in the room ...

My mother-in-law used to have a list of "feeling words" on her refrigerator. They were accompanied by a fill-in-the-blank statement, "I feel _________ when you __________." The idea was that you separate the way you feel from the person's action instead of blaming them directly ...

I can understand why lots of people assume that I wrote A Good and Perfect Gift with an audience of parents of children with Down syndrome in mind. It certainly speaks directly to our shared situation, and many parents have written me to say that they went through a similar ...

By now, many of you have already read Notes From a Dragon Mom, Emily Rapp's beautiful and honest meditation about her son Ronan, who is terminally ill with Tay-Sachs disease. She writes,

How do you parent without a net, without a future, knowing that you will lose your child, ...

Yesterday should have been rough. Peter was away, and I had gotten about five hours of sleep. But then, Marilee signed "eat" for the first time. William prayed, "Um, God, please help Dad get home safety with no accidents." Penny got frustrated as she tried to hang a photo on ...

"You then, my son, be strong in the grace that is in Christ Jesus."

–2 Timothy 2:1

I believe that God's grace, offered through Jesus to each and every one of us, is always available. Even if we "cheapen" it (to paraphrase Bonhoeffer) by persistent sin, even if we wait until the ...

I have a post on Scot McKnight's Jesus Creed blog today that discusses a recent survey comparing Protestant Christian schools to their Catholic, public, homeschooling, and private non-religious peers. As someone who attended a private non-religious boarding school, worked for ...

A friend remarked a number of years ago that writing a memoir has three stages–living the story, writing the story, and then sending the story out into the world. Each part contains its own risks, of course, but I'm feeling the vulnerability of part three these days. I want ...

When we sit down to dinner as a family, we often go around the table and share one good thing about our day. But last night I decided, on the suggestion of a book I'm reading, to ask everyone, "What's one mistake you made today?" The idea is that we start giving our kids freedom ...

I don't have the words to convey how much I liked Geore Estreich's book, The Shape of the Eye: Down Syndrome, Family, and the Stories We Inherit. Estreich is a poet, and his simple yet elegant prose tells the story of his daughter Laura's entrance into their family. It details ...

I've been thinking about comparisons. We do it without thinking–compare our waistline to the person next to us, notice what car he drives, what bag she carries, what beauty they possess. And once children are a part of the equation, it all steps up a notch. We compare everything ...

I'm years away from being an "empty nester," and although I suspect that Penny will one day live independently, there's always the possibility that our daughter with Down syndrome (or, for that matter, our typically-developing son or daughter) might end up under our roof for ...