Barbie is known for her luxurious blonde hair, twinkly blue eyes, extensive and inappropriate wardrobe and, of course, her unrealistic figure.

But two moms want to make her more relevant to their daughters. They are petitioning Mattel through Facebook to come out with "Bald and Beautiful Barbie". Both their daughters have lost their hair to cancer treatments and the moms think that releasing a bald doll will normalize the girls' situation and make them feel beautiful and special. In turn, a bald doll will help other girls facing similar situations.

This wasn't the post I was planing to write tonight, but given the night I've had it is what I have come up with.

My 11-year-old son was in a funk and feeling cranky and down. He was lying on my bed when he did a funny, jerky head move and banged his head on the corner of my bedside table.

It obviously hurt and I went over to check out the situation and as I was soothing him, I noticed blood - never a good thing.

Fat makes us uncomfortable; it also makes us unhealthy. Which is exactly what the Children's Healthcare of Atlanta is hoping will come across with their new Strong4Life campaign that make the viewer look into the face of an obese kid with the tagline: "It is hard to be a little girl, when you aren't one."

But is it going to far? Is shame and humiliation the thing that is needed to get healthy food on the table and kids off the couch?

A third-grader in Ohio was taken from his parents and placed in foster care recently because he weighed over 200 pounds.

The child has sleep apnea related to his weight and needs to use a machine at night to make sure that he is breathing properly.

His mother says that she loves him and is doing her best: “They are trying to make it seem like I am unfit, like I don’t love my child,” the boy’s mother said. “Of course I love him. Of course I want him to lose weight. It is very hard, but I am trying.

You know those moments when your kid chokes and you get scared? Or when a button goes missing and you think it is up your kid's nose?

I always have a moment when I wonder if this is it. If this is the moment when 911 will get called, the ambulance will come and I will end up on the news.

But no, it's not. Phew. In fact, it was nothing. Just a normal scare in the parenting world.

You know those mind tricks you play with yourself? If you buy travel insurance, you won't need it. If you buy those super-enormous band-aids, they will sit unopened? That is how we felt about storing our newborn's stem cells.

My middle son's cord blood was collected minutes after his birth and is now sitting in a cryogenic freezer somewhere hopefully to never be used. Cord blood is a byproduct of birth and is full of stem cells which can help repair cells damaged by disease. We pay $100 bucks for it to sit there on ice, as some kind of insurance against bad things happening. We sort of feel like it is a bit of a scam, but we keep paying for it anyways.

I met Lorraine at university, and to know Lorraine is to know that she is always passionate about something; that passion settled into helping people in the third world. She travelled, had two kids and then another. We sort of fell out of touch until I got an email from her describing a harrowing cancer diagnosis of multiple myeloma days following the birth of her third child and then a year of hard work - physically and mentally. Perhaps it has happened to you -- someone you are friends with but have fallen out of touch with for no particular reason was diagnosed, or had something happen to them that changes everything; perhaps, it is you. Lorraine wrote her story here:

Days after giving birth to my third child, I was told that I had incurable cancer.

I couldn't even take that in. Though I had never examined it before, I realized that implicit in the decision to have children was the idea that I would be around to help them grow up. Having incurable cancer just seemed ridiculous; I was healthy and did all the right things like eat well and exercise; I had no risk factors. But I guess that's the thing with cancer - you don't ever choose it, it chooses you.

Mother's Day makes me grumpy. Sure, I get to sleep in and my husband tries really hard for a couple of hours - he gets me flowers and breakfast and at least one of my kids is still into it (thanks, honey!). But the rest of the day is spent shuttling between sports events and errands.

But it's not my family that is the problem - it's me. My expectations are the problem. The push-pull of family life; of course I want to be with my family - it's Mother's Day. But I don't really. I want to spend a day hanging out with my girlfriends and my sister but they are all with their families, simultaneously wishing that they were hanging out with me.

Which leads me to what women want for Mother's Day. Here is the secret:

Let me set up the following story by saying that my middle son is small and slight – not weirdly small - but smaller than most boys his age.

I’m standing in the school hallway waiting for my 8-year-old son when a mother comes up to me and says: “Have you ever had Sam tested for celiac disease?” [Celiac disease is an inability to digest gluten which can lead to illness and issues with growth].

“Because,” she goes on, “a kid in my Ashleigh’s class was diagnosed as celiac and he  had no other symptoms other than he is short. As soon as I heard that story, I thought I should tell you as maybe that is Sam’s problem.”

“Um…no. He is small but is growing at a steady rate on the growth chart,” I said, barely.

“Well, I thought you should know,” she finished up.

I hurt my back a couple of days ago, a rib popped out in my mid-back. (I am sure there is a medical name for it, but that is my lay explanation.) It hurts a lot (I'm typing this standing at the kitchen counter). But it goes away and I know after a couple of days of ice and chiropractic care, it will be fine.

Yesterday was also my husband's birthday. I drove to school to pick up my daughter hoping that the bum warmer in my car would dull the pain a bit. The plan was that I was going to pick her up and then we would go meet my husband for lunch.