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, bit by torturous bit?Depressing? ...

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 the harrowing months following ...

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 many years of their adulthood. ...

A post by Joanna Goddard that describes the struggle of infertility: What if You Can't Have a Baby? Especially if you are struggling with infertility or trying to understand a friend in this position, Goddard's post might be a helpful guide. I resonated with these words as I think back to how I felt ...

Over the course of the past few weeks, Patheos has featured A Good and Perfect Gift on the Patheos Book Club. Click here to read an excerpt, Q and A, etc. In addition, they featured four bloggers who reflected on the book:

Jennifer Grant, "The Nature of Love Is to Expand," who writes:

. . . through it ...

I have a new post on The Goody Blog for  Parents Magazine called "What I Learned from Raising a Child with Down syndrome." It could also be called, "What I Learned from Raising a Child," even if the "lessons" have been more pronounced due to Penny's extra chromosome. That's one of the remarkable things ...

I have a new post on Motherlode, the parenting blog of the New York Times: "Has Down Syndrome Hurt Us?". (Incidentally, for those of you who love the content of Motherlode and read it regularly, as I do, Lisa Belkin, the editor, is moving to the Huffington Post. I'm hoping to continue to contribute ...

A few weeks back someone asked me, "When did you know there was something wrong with your baby?" I hesitated for a moment before answering, because I'm not convinced that there was something wrong with my baby. I think he meant, "When did you find out Penny had Down syndrome?" and I certainly understand ...

I've written before about the two stories circulating in our culture about Down syndrome. There's the prenatal testing story, which suggests that fewer and fewer children with Down syndrome are being and will be born as women choose to terminate their pregnancies once they discover the presence of the ...

I'm working on an article for Parents.com which will offering advice about raising a child with Down syndrome. I have my list of bullet-points that I would offer, but I'm curious what you all would say. If you are the parent of a child with Down syndrome (or a child with special needs) what has helped ...

Penny woke up every morning the first week of kindergarten and looked at me eagerly, "I get to go to kindergarten again?" Her tone held a mixture of incredulity and delight.

We've settled into a morning routine–pack lunch and a snack, make breakfast, get dressed. She and William strap their backpacks ...

I thought you might be interested in a few reviews of A Good and Perfect Gift that came in over the course of the past few days:

First, from the Oregonian, a review by Amy Wang. She writes:

"A Good and Perfect Gift: Faith, Expectations, and a Little Girl Named Penny," Amy Julia Becker's new book about ...

I grieved after Penny was born. I wish it weren't true, but I can't deny it. I know, I know. It was a normal response, and I needed to go through it in order for things to change. Actually, one of the most challenging aspects of writing A Good and Perfect Gift was revisiting my emotions from those early ...

I have written before about the concept of a "wrongful" birth–the legal term used when a mother sues doctors after her child has been born with a disability that wasn't discovered in utero. The idea is that the mother would have aborted, given the proper medical information. I wrote a response to one ...

As a writer and former English major, I know that language matters. The way we talk about our world informs the way we experience our world. Language shapes reality. And so we are teaching our kids, for example, not to say "I hate that" (they learned hate from Cinderella, of all places!). We support ...

I have a new post on Bloom–Parenting Kids with Disabilities, "Friends in Need, Friends Indeed."

It begins:

I have 300 new friends. Well, not really. But last week, a woman who knows I write about having a child with Down syndrome sent me a Facebook message and a friend request. I responded. She then "suggested" ...

I received a very kind comment over the weekend. In response to my recent post, "Penny's First Day of Kindergarten," she wrote,

Wow, did she really tell you all about the funny man up on the stage? What did she say? Do people understand her when she speaks and does she really speak that clearly? I do ...

Are you in a Book Club? (This is besides the point of this blogpost, but as a personal aside–if so, what have been your top three books in the past year?)

Just wanted to let you and your book club know that there are now Questions for Discussion available on my website about A Good and Perfect Gift. ...

Three articles I recommend for your reading this weekend:

First, a New York Times piece about the impact of artificial insemination as more and more children discover their "half-siblings." When one man "fathers" 150 children, the chances of those siblings accidentally meeting and even, theoretically, ...

A few weeks ago, I had the chance to talk with Diane Markins of Words in High Def about A Good and Perfect Gift and having a child with Down syndrome. You can listen to the interview by visiting her website and listening to the MP3.

While you're there, you'll find a guest post I wrote in conjunction ...