It’s Friday and that means: FRIDAY FAVORITES TIME! I’ve got a lot of great posts for you to peruse today. So without further ado, in no particular order:

Luschka, Diary of a First Child: I enjoyed her post Whose Baby Is It Anyway? Luschka discusses the idea of parents being the expert about their children. Basically, doctors and other experts might have some great suggestions for us, but they’re not the ones living with our children and so we’re the ones who need to decide what works best for our kids.

Melissa, Confessions of a Dr. Mom: Breastfeeding Broke My Heart is a beautiful piece. Melissa, a pediatrician, was diagnosed with the rare condition Insufficient Glandular Tissue and unable to exclusively breastfeed her children. I admire not only how hard she worked to get out what milk she could, but how willing she is to tell her story to raise awareness about IGT. She also links to pages with more information about IGT if you’re interested in learning more.

Shannon, Three Seven: You may remember me talking about the BlogHer conference a couple of weeks ago. I desperately want to attend next year. Of all the BlogHer recap posts I read, BlogHer ’10 sums up the feeling and meaning of this conference better than all of them. It’s a beautiful thing.

Brandie, ParentCentral.CA: One of the events at BlogHer this year was TuTus for Tanner. Tanner is the nephew of one of my favorite bloggers, Catherine of Her Bad Mother, and he is dying. TuTus for Tanner was just one of a few events that weekend set up to help raise money for Tanner’s mother to redo her basement so that Tanner is able to die at home, surrounded by loved ones, instead of in a hospital. Brandie’s article explains the event and has some beautiful pictures.

Amber Strocel and Crunchy Carpets: I’m linking up this last post to let you know about The Purple Program to help raise awareness of and prevent Shaken Baby Syndrome. They’re on the lookout for knitters and for women (who birthed in Canada) to share their parenthood stories. Please check out these posts and contribute if you can.

Suuuuuper short Friday Favorites post today! I’m still working on the teen program slideshow I have to put on the teen space site and then I’ve got the contact list to update for them.

I thought this post from Amber Page Writes was really cute. It’s about the award she’d love to win, entitled A Title I’d be Proud to Have.

So, I got up early to write this post while I watched the Brasil game. Then my team lost (Kaka is a on my bad list) and I was too depressed to write. And then I had a 2 hour phone call with one of my fav. people at the NMF. So now it’s lunch time and I’m catching up. Anyway, here goes!

I’ve featured Amber Strocel before and I love her article Things my Toddler Taught me. It’s a great reminder of the things we can learn from our kids, particularly during the trying toddler years. I love watching the Menininho explore new things, like a llama’s fur with his face (yesterday).

If you like thoughtful discussion, Arwyn is a great woman to follow on Twitter. I’ve stayed up later than I’d intended more than once talking with her. I loved her recent post A Day in Pictures, and a Call to Photographic Action. It’s about the need to see ourselves as beautiful, to find the positives in our body and not just the flaws, and to do so even in photographs. I mean I’ll admit, I hate seeing pictures of myself because I always point out my flaws. Arwyn prompts readers to try out taking pictures of themselves until they find ones they like, to question society’s definition of beauty and really come to love ourselves.

As usual, PhD in Parenting has another stellar breastfeeding post: I Won’t Ask You Why You Didn’t Breastfeed (actually inspired by another one of Arwyn’s posts). It has some really great points for those of us who consider ourselves breastfeeding advocates to remember.

And last but not least, I came across the Peaceful Parenting blog from someone retweeting this article on Twitter (sorry, I don’t remember who!). It’s called Breastfeeding in Church: A Picture of Christ’s Sacrificial Love. I love the author’s, Ruth Engelthaler’s, perspective of breastfeeding as a sacred act.