My aspirationally weekly, realistically more like monthly email of books and enthusiasms will keep your #tbr full and make sure you know what's next.
Things That Make Me Happy Originally uploaded by kjda This is on our road home. I see it every day, and every day I think of that road crew, goofing around with the tar, and I laugh. KJ Dell’Antonia sent from my iPhone
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All night I’ve been thinking–who can I get to hang out with us tomorrow morning? No babysitting Thursday mornings, see, and I’m faced with three hours alone with the dynamic duo, waiting to pick up Lily. Alone, in the house, with Mr. Mario Cart and Miss I Want Scissors I Want Painting I Want Coloring. Actually, both of those activities are fine, as they are individual and require nothing from me except, you know, something about every ten minutes, or […]
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Everyone needs buds. MIne come in, um, human and online form. Physical and online? Ok, that sounds better. I couldn’t parent without mine, and I couldn’t write without my crew of fellow writers, too–a couple of whom, today, totally offhand, provided me with complete inspiration when I really needed it. Writers (like parents) tend to work alone. I’m lucky enough to have a couple of editors I’m in regular contact with, and a couple of steady gigs that mean I […]
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Actually playing together. Originally uploaded by kjda KJ Dell’Antonia sent from my iPhone
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Two Months Ago Originally uploaded by kjda I sat on this bench, in this museum, with another adoptive parent and her recently at home daughter…and never really thought this would happen. KJ Dell’Antonia sent from my iPhone
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When I think about it, all of my kids have had a totally different mother. They all had certain traits in common–overwhelmed, low on patience, mildly irritable–but in terms of permissiveness, we–the four mothers I have been–have run the gamut. When I was Sam’s mother, and only Sam’s mother, I made all of his baby food. I can tell you precisely when he had his first lollipop (Easter 2002–thanks mom!). Salty snacks were limited, and fell into the faux-good-for-you category. […]
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How weird must it be, to talk to your kid’s new mom about what she was like as a baby? Is it akin to giving your husband’s new wife a call to tell her what he likes in bed? Only Rory’s other mother knows, and she’s not telling. Because she is a kind person, and because, I suppose, we both know it would change nothing. The way it is is the way it is. She belonged with her first family […]
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On June 6, I completed the squishing and flipping and baking project that is Amish Friendship Bread–which I know for a fact is slowly conquering the country, and may be nothing more than a ploy to get us all to buy at least one package of vanilla pudding this year–baked my two loaves, and froze one. June 6 was just a few days after we got our travel dates. Rory was still pictures and an idea. We were thinking packing, […]
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Rory ran off in town today, just shot merrily off down the sidewalk and around the corner. We were on a block with no crosswalks and a sort of little plaza, and she was going right back to where we’d been a few minutes ago, before we went to–you guessed it–the potty–so it wasn’t that bad, and I almost let it go. I wasn’t angry or even worried–even if she’d gone a little farther, we live in a small town […]
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I tend to feel so different in the morning that I think maybe I ought to look into lithium. Or possibly electric shock therapy. Today’s plan is to let Wyatt and Rory duke it out. I have tried punishing him every time he touches her, and it doesn’t work–and the truth is, most of the time, he’s not actually doing anything he doesn’t do to Lily 62 times a day. It’s jsut that Rory has this deeply, deeply annoying screechy […]
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Sam and I are just back from a preview of G Force (and, for the record, your kids will love it and so will you). We took the whole afternoon together, had dinner, got there just as it was starting–only to find them turning away a line of a hundred-plus people. But I am “press” and we got in–and it turned out Sam never doubted that we would!
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I would post, but how many times can I say that this is hard? How many times can I detail the ways I’ve failed today, or the ways I’ve taken my frustration out on my family? How many times can you hear, again, that I have simply got too many small children…too many to take to the bathroom. To many to cut up fruit for, too many to mix chocolate milk for, too many to watch in the swimming pool, […]
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The thing I like best about the swimming pool is that they can all touch. Not that this means I am off in my plastic adirondack chair licking a Jolly Rancher icepop (the biggest vice available at the pool, sadly–where is my mojito?). But I can sit on the side, in primo splashing territory for all the horrible little splashy children in their swimsuits, shoving the ones that don’t belong to me aside and saying jeez, kid, don’t get between […]
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I’ve been thinking lately about one particular internet friend, known online as kittymama, and I’ve been thinking about her because the child she brings home will be her first. And I want her to know, in advance, one thing: You hate them sometimes no matter what. Babies, biological, adopted, I’m guessin’ any way you bring them into the family, they screw things up. And I mean that in the most loving, actually dealing pretty well way. When you have your […]
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Adopting a three-year-old is not very much like having a baby, except in the level of shock to the system. One does not, for example, have to nurse, or wake up every three hours, or carry the baby around for hours on end in the hope that it will somehow stop crying. But the wow factor–the shock and awe and the what have we done–that’s there, in spades. Tonight was a wall-punching night for me. I was congratulating myself on […]
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Rationing health care: gotta be done. (Psst…we already do it.)
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So. It’s 9:15. I’m bitterly exhausted. Tomorrow is…another day, another day, another day. Another day feeding them, talking to them, tending them, wiping them. Another day. If I go to bed now I’m likely to get some sleep. I will be more rested for them. But the day will come…sooner. And there I will be.
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Being a Good Sport Originally uploaded by kjda I squeezed her cone trying to peel the wrapper off, but she can take it. KJ Dell’Antonia sent from my iPhone
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I don’t understand. Not that Lily and Wyatt don’t touch one another, or bug one another occasionally–but Rory they feel compelled to constantly poke. If she is sitting on a barstool, one of them is touching her feet. If she is on the couch, one of them is on top of her, prodding her. If she is wandering around, someone is following her–touching her. They poke her in the car, they prod her in the stroller, they nudge her at […]
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