Posts

Lily’s Braids Originally uploaded by kjda Lily is going to be Hermione tomorrow night. Hermione has bushy hair. Lily has straight hair.

Wyatt was super excited. “Let’s carve penguins!” I was all, dude, that’s going to be so messy. But frankly the pumpkins were messy enough. As usual, my eyes were bigger than my carving stomach. We had a TON of pumpkins to carve. Fortunately Sam turned out to enjoy gutting them nearly as much as he did carving the faces. And like so many things, pumpkin carving is easier but still not precisely idyllic when your youngest kid is five. They […]

218 pages. 66,000 words, give or take a few. A book. About that year, that really bad year, when Rory was new and we both thought our lives had caroomed (no, really, spell-check, caroomed, I don’t know what you mean by caromed but it isn’t what I mean, not at all) to a very bad place, but only I get to write a book about it. Yet. I just finished the draft. It’s a first draft. With a lot of […]

Dinner Originally uploaded by kjda Let it never be said that Rory’s KFC meal did not include vegetables.

I really thought I’d be asleep by now. I got into bed at 10:15. And then there were just a FEW emails to answer. And then I thought, just half an hour’s book revision. Just half an hour, no more. But it was going kind of well. And then there were just a couple more emails. And Facebook. And a message. And now, this. And a new blog post by a favorite blogger to read (that would be Jess, on […]

I did some serious gunning for parent of the year tonight. Tonight was the school’s annual “wine and cheese” party. Babysitting was provided by the middle school students, and after a full day of work and two hours “coaching” Sam’s lego league team, I grabbed Rory and Wyatt from the actual babysitter and prepared to transfer them to the middle school team. (Lily came separately, with a friend’s mom.) I promised them a bouncy house. There was none. I delivered […]

I’m tired. I’ve been tired all day–sleepy tired, as in, shut-your-eyes-for-just-one-minute-huh? It’s that kind of day. Chilly, dreary, a little rainy. And I just got my mac id to work with iCloud. And I’m sitting here, looking at it. at the little thing that says “move your MobileMe to iCloud” and thinking, damn. It’s all working. Right now, email, iCal–all nicely sync’d up just the way I want them. ANd I JUST know if I move, there will be growing […]

So this past weekend, I was driving the car, listening to the Moth story hour on NHPR and feeling lucky. I love the Moth (true stories told live). Hell, I have a story I want to tell the Moth. (The Pringle Fairy.) But mostly, I love that what I expected to be a chore—a half-hour’s drive to a sleepover for Lily—was going to be a pleasure. Double amputee, athlete, actress and over-achiever Aimee Mullins was telling a fantastic story, about […]

This weekend, our family of six will load up, head to the medical center, and wait in line for our flu shots. It will be at least our sixth annual such journey, and a funny thing has happened along the way: the kids have embraced the whole thing. Not just because they don’t want to get the flu. I’m obviously a believer in the shot, even understanding its limitations. The vaccine’s effectiveness depends on the match between the influenza viruses […]

Gonna push the world away for a minute, pretend I don’t live in it… I was on the periphery of a tragedy today, one that wasn’t mine in any way, so I won’t go into details. I did what little I could for the people closer to it, and thought about how communities are when sudden grief strikes: first things fall apart, as people find their day-to-day routine interrupted, and there is a flurry of regrouping, and then they pull […]

Where’s the Phone? Originally uploaded by kjda I’ve figured out why we can never find a phone when it rings. (there’s even one hung up in the background.) I may have yours. KJ Dell’Antonia sent from my iPhone

I really don’t think we talk enough about snot. That’s by way of a warning that if you don’t actually WANT to talk about snot, I highly recommend you head over to Motherlode (http://parenting.blogs.nytimes.com/), where I am not writing about snot, and I would love to see you (I am particularly proud of today’s post: http://parenting.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/10/12/putting-down-the-ipad-so-my-kids-can-see-me-read/ ). But this is about snot. After a week and a half of no exercise, thanks to the kind of sinus infection that causes […]

Sam is grumpy, and I know why. He had the day off school, and he really didn’t do anything. Which is partly down to him: he didn’t try to do anything, didn’t look for a friend or set out to build a LavaMaster 5000 or anything like that, and partly down to me. He is ten, after all, much of the really fun stuff he gets to comes from me planning really fun stuff, and today, I didn’t. I was […]

For today, I offer you two topics: School lunches: Fix ’em from the top down, or the bottom up? And: Middle School locker bling: a harmless outshoot of too much igloo decorating on Club Penguin, or consumerism run amuck?

This always happens. I go to the doctor, knowing, as I did today, that I have a sinus infection. This one is a whopper, a horrible, painful, miserable, ear-popper. Moving my head is agony. Blowing my nose, worse, and of course I only have to blow my nose oh, every forty-seven seconds. Plus, you really don’t want to have a sinus infection if you’re going to change altitude by 600 feet or so a couple times a day, and here, […]

I Want Teee! Originally uploaded by kjda It’s very important to be able to ask for what you want. It’s also very important to listen. When we got to the pizza place, Rory had to go potty. She was jumping up and down, and I told her to run, but– "What do you want to drink?" "I wan’ tee." "Really? Tea?" "I wan’ TEEEE!" "Ok! Fine! Go!" I ordered–pizza all ’round, three fountain drinks, and one bottled drink–tea, but I […]

Tonight was “open school night” or “back to school” night or something like that at Sam and Lily’s school. No kids, just parents in the classroom. Don’t tell Lily, but because we’ve been second grade parents before, we defaulted more towards Sam’s class, although Rob went to her teacher’s main presentation, and I rolled in for the tail end and to ask a key question. In Sam’s class, though, I focused. I listened to the lovely, lovely teacher. I copied […]