March is cerebral palsy awareness month. Would I have known this if my child did not have cerebral palsy? Probably not. Would I be wearing a green ribbon and thinking not of leprechauns and Mardi Gras and Easter, but instead of this diagnosis? Probably not. But because my son does have cerebral palsy and because it is the thing I must write on every medical and financial and government form, I do know what March …

None of this was in the baby books or my English books or the novels and poetry that had formed the substance of my thirty years of existence. But the great thing about being a parent, especially to a child with special needs, is that it makes you a lifelong learner. It redirects your attention in all manners and at any given time. It makes a right-brain like me a little more of a lefty. …

“I don’t want you. I don’t want you. I don’t want you.” It’s the phrase we fear in the deepest darkest pit of our psyches where junior high dates and first periods go to die. It’s the phrase that spills angst all over our best laid plans for autonomy. Now put that on repeat and blast it on your biggest 80s boom box and you’ve got a sense of my current mental state. No woman …

As a kid, I loved the snow—the wet magic of it that made the world brighter and cleaner and got me out of school. When you finally trudged in, it made hot chocolate that much sweeter and the house that much warmer and the snowman in the front yard that much more awesome when everything else melted and still he remained, a stoic companion. But as a parent, my view of snow gets more complicated. …

 February 14, 2012. We’ve been through so much by this time that I’ve grown outwardly unresponsive to calamity. To an observer, we are just a happily married couple on their way to parenthood. Our faces flicker gently in the candlelight. This is the Valentine’s Day I will always remember as the before part of the “before and after”. Click the picture below to read the full story on Scary Mommy.

Valentine’s Day is truly the perfect kid holiday. You’re not old enough to be jaded by the “most romantic day of the year” and you get piles of candy and actual mail. It’s cold out but you don’t care because you’re all sugared up and shuffling through candy like a blackjack dealer. Consider these 11 lovely books on love the nightcap to your Valentine’s Day. Snoring Beauty by Sudipta Bardhan-Quallen Fractured fairytales are the best. …

“Do you want breadsticks?” “What?” I said and leaned half my body over the counter. “Do you want breadsticks!” he yelled. I was in the mall, standing under the neon Sbarro sign at dinnertime rush hour. The cashier, a teen in plastic gloves and a hairnet, looked desperate. I finally nodded “yes” because who doesn’t want breadsticks? Behind me, my family continued to howl. I don’t mean howling in a metaphorical sense. My husband, five-year-old …

I did not know adults napped. Until the first weekend I spent with my husband’s family, I thought it was only something children did in infancy or on colored mats in kindergarten. But at around two o’clock on that Sunday, something in the house shifted. People started to disappear. They retreated into their various spaces without a word. The house was deadly quiet and so I tiptoed through the living room like a thief. My …

There’s a famous scene from “Monty Python and the Holy Grail” that almost everybody knows. It’s plague season, and Eric Idle wanders through the village streets yelling, “Bring out your dead!” People toss bodies on the wagon like it’s recycling day. And then there’s that one guy who just can’t get with the program. He’s on the wagon of death, and he lifts up his head like a baby bird and croaks, “I’m not dead …

I grew up on “Dead Poets Society” and “The Breakfast Club.” Robin Williams was my teacher idol and Judd Nelson my idol crush. Give me poetry and Saturday school and see what happens. I majored in English and read “Leaves of Grass.” Of course I did. I am the bulls eye in the targeted audience for carpe diem in all its glory. I want magic and opportunity. I want the extraordinary life. Except now I …