Welcome to Friday Favorites! If you’re new to the blog, here’s how to play along. Every Friday I devote my post to showcasing awesome blog posts by other bloggers that I’ve read over the past week or two. I invite you to do the same and link up here, OR just link up directly to those posts you’ve loved this week. This is any easy way to share the love and find great new blogs.

I LOVED Jennifer‘s of Anybody Want a Peanut? post: Unspoken but True. Her son Moe is on the autism spectrum and so communicates differently than neuro-typical children. This is a really beautiful post about an affectionate moment she shared with her son.

I met Erin, who has Type 1 diabetes in graduate school. At the time, Mark & I didn’t yet know that he had developed Type 1 as well. Erin recently started the blog The Insulin Crowd and I was particularly drawn to her post The Most Awesome Thing I Have Done In Spite of Diabetes Was . . .. Working with people with chronic illness, and having a sister with Type 1 who traveled Europe, I hear “are you sure you/they should do ___?” a lot. Having an illness does not mean we should stop living, it just means we need to be more creative or thoughtful in planning our experiences. Click on over to see what Erin did (and it’s REALLY awesome)!

I can really relate to WendyKate‘s of ABCs and Garden Peas blog post, My Son, the Domestic Goddess?. She writes about allowing her son to play with a variety of toys, and the comments she’s received about that. I haven’t gotten a lot of comments about it at this point, but we let M play with whatever toys he likes, and right now that’s his kitchen set and a baby doll and his blocks.

And last but not least, the post Birth Day by She Suggests was very poignant. It’s about expectations and reality and really just speaks for itself, so please go check it out.