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.
Happy Birthday Rory! Originally uploaded by kjda Rory is four! (Well, in a few hours, anyway, and as best as we know, so there you are.) If you’re thinking “That’s a pretty lame cake for a 4-year-old, KJ,” well, you’re right. It’s also pretty tiny. But just outside the picture are the two plus dozen mini cupcakes she’s taking to school, and the extra cupcakes for breakfast, and still more to share with her babysitter and friends, it looks a […]
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Inspired by Guo Ji Mama, who updated her blog header the day her last daughter came home, I have FINALLY updated mine. Call it what you will. Maybe I wasn’t ready. Maybe I’d just forgotten how to use Cyberduck to upload the file to my theme, or more importantly to resize the picture. Maybe I’m just lazy, and the kind of hostess who leaves the giant bottle of nature’s miracle (used to remove the scent of doggie “accidents”) on the […]
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Three solid i-friends (Mommy, Lori and the mother of Awesome Cloud) are in China right now. Some bonding troubles, not all is going perfectly–but I find myself envying them, especially those last two, who sound, at least, uncomplicatedly happy. I think China really screwed us–and this has nothing to do with Rory at all. But the quarantine…that was so hard, and so scary, even though in retrospect I can see that we didn’t need to be frightened, and so long…you […]
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World’s Biggest Thrill Ride Originally uploaded by kjda If you’re 3. KJ Dell’Antonia sent from my iPhone
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Goofiness at the Fair Originally uploaded by kjda KJ Dell’Antonia sent from my iPhone
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Best View in Town Originally uploaded by kjda KJ Dell’Antonia sent from my iPhone
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Contrary to the Picture Originally uploaded by kjda Rory quite liked the Ferris Wheel. KJ Dell’Antonia sent from my iPhone
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At the Tunbridge World’s Fair Originally uploaded by kjda KJ Dell’Antonia sent from my iPhone
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We’re looking for submissions about how a major life event has altered your “religiosity”, and I suspect that many adoptive parents have a story to tell on that. Look here for more info, and feel free to tell any writerly friends.
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World’s Cutest Card Sharks Originally uploaded by kjda KJ Dell’Antonia sent from my iPhone
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I don’t know about you, but I worry about my pampered bio kids sometimes. I moved and changed schools multiple times as a kid. I hated it; it was awful. My mom worked and, much as she did for me, there wasn’t anybody to bring me my lunch if I forgot it. As I got older, I had more responsibilities, and a few more baddish things to live through, etc. So I had my (small compared to, say, Jeannette Walls) […]
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Where in the World is KJ Originally uploaded by kjda Boston. Not a big trip, or an unusual one, but it’s always nice to visit a different Starbucks once in a while. The word of the day at our house this morning was compromise–and it’s a good one. We are all easing up on our need to have e rything exactly the way we want it to be. Breakfast, for example, was not precisely what Rory had in mind. Instead […]
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I’m feeling impatient and cranky today–like all I can do is gripe at people and criticize. And very touchy–as in, I worked hard on this dinner and you’d better sit down and eat it right now, and for heaven sakes don’t TALK to me while you’re doing it! Nobody is moving fast enough or being nice enough for me. Rory’s horrible wound is a little better. Sam still looks like he’s been in the wars, but I don’t think he’s […]
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We biked 18 miles today–two little kids on one double tag-a-long bike and one on a single tag-a-long. Sam and a buddy rode solo. It was the “Tour de Taste” with lots of stops for food, so it wasn’t quite the monster journey it sounds like. But it should have been 19 miles–which it turned out was exactly one mile too long. Rory went from super sport, rollicking along, talking to the other kids–to sound asleep. On the bike. I’m […]
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I posted about an acquaintance whose life changed on 9/11. . I’ve never written about it before–it’s her story–but today it finally came out right.
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Is giving to art and cultural charites moral when 24,000 kids die every day from easily preventable, poverty-related causes like diarrhea and pneumonia? Discuss. But on DoubleX, please, not here!
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School day, redux Originally uploaded by kjda I don’t wan’ go school! That pretty much sums up our morning. Our babysitter, fabulous in nearly every way, isn’t on the school night train yet (and it’s been a tough one for us to get on, too). Rory went to bed an hour plus later than she needs to. She had to be dragged out of bed. All the way to school she insisted–she did not want to go. Wyatt had some […]
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An adoption bud is in China right now, three days from meeting her daughter, and she wrote a line about “that sweet little face that needs her mama to come pick her up” and my heart just broke. Rory has a sweet little face, and she could use a mama to come pick her up, too, and in all honesty I’m still not feeling it. I like her fine. She’s swell. She’s even very special, and she’s been through so […]
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What I Really Want to do tonight Originally uploaded by kjda The bag on top is my favorite candy, finally restocked after a long absence (apparently it’s very expensive to ship candy during the summer). Yes, Rory dropped into the right family, although my candy cravings are far more selective than hers, and none of them yet have shown any sign of regarding books as candy. I also found a pair of new books to add to my kindle. Actually […]
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At dinner last night: This good, mommy! Thank you! To Wyatt, instead of a slap: You make me so MAD! (Wyatt: You make me so mad TOO!) This morning, 7 am, standing in our room fully dressed: I ready go school now! I get my shoes on! Tonight, awakened from an accidental post-dinner nap on the way home in the car (I tried to put her to bed, but it was just that much too early) and about to have […]
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Lily post-kindergarden Originally uploaded by kjda Lily’s first day pic is in my camera, so here she is painting pottery in honor of her first day!
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Take One of Me Too! Originally uploaded by kjda KJ Dell’Antonia sent from my iPhone
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In Exchange for a Smile Picture Originally uploaded by kjda KJ Dell’Antonia sent from my iPhone
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First Day of School Originally uploaded by kjda KJ Dell’Antonia sent from my iPhone
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I have a piece in Parenting this month copping to my perennially tardy nature and the struggles I’ve had overcoming it–and let me say, it’s still a struggle, a big one, I just refuse to believe, for example, that it can take 1/2 an hour to drive to ballet, because that’s just not right. But. So last year, experts were consulted (including my mom), and changes were made, and I undertook to be an on-time person for the first time […]
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Tonight was the open house at Lily, Wyatt and Rory’s Montessori preschool. Rory was very angry that I refused to leave; this did not comport at all with what she had been told about school, which she clearly has conceived of as a place that she will go and be relieved of my constant supervision and insistence that things be done my way…boy, is she in for a surprise! The teachers have been warned…if they’re not in charge, she will […]
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She’s getting used to us. I have judged her harshly these past weeks, this girl. I have a personal problem, which is that I invariably believe that whatever is happening right now must and will continue to happen exactly like this, world without end, forever and ever, etc. This applies with kids–Lily will always be unreasonable about the blue plate, therefore I should go buy all blue plates and just end this issue now (so last month)–and in other ways–I […]
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I totally love Rory now–no hesitation–which makes it ok for me to say this: sometimes I like being mean to her. In a totally virtuous way, of course. I just reviewed the dvd of Olivia for DoubleX, and in one episode, Olivia refuses to wear her soccer shirt–she doesn’t like dressing like everyone else-and she’s rewarded, in the end, by getting to play goalie and saving the game, and I just wanted to slap that pig upside the ears. Sometimes […]
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I’m having a moment. Summer is over, it is oh so very much over. Sam is back at school, and the others go back next week, and the luxury of having so many days stretch out before us with little planned is utterly gone, and I am feeling like I wasted so much of it caught up in my own stuff. Sam will turn 9 next year–nine!–and time is passing. I should have spent the whole summer holding his hand. […]
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Wyatt’s my baby. My buddy, my beloved littlest one and the only one who looks like me. When I got to our sitter’s today I heard him sobbing through the window, and I rushed in–pausing to give Rory a hug on the way–calling what’s wrong, Wy? He didn’t want to come home, that’s what’s wrong. Now, I know Heather’s house is a haven of legos and turtles and popsicles (and it’s SUPPOSED to be, I love that they love it […]
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Send a letter, help a family: Friends over at Guo Ji Famiglia have been working to bring their little girl home from Guatemala for over three years now (yes, you read that right). She’s legally theirs, and in every way–they’ve been taking care of her from afar for years. Guatemala has been all over the case, and the biological mother has come to court to say, in person, that yes–she wants her daughter to be adopted by this family. A […]
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First, there was ice cream. Originally uploaded by kjda And now–a moonlit playground. How are things going? Brilliantly, actually. Who wouldn’t want to be part of a family like this? (that’s not even sarcasm, I add, mindful of the day I wrote something like "I love reading trip trap trip trap in this version of the Billy Goats Gruff" and and my editor said whoa, that’s a little too snarky even for you and I said oh, no, actually I […]
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Because Wyatt Takes "Twinning" Very Seriously. Originally uploaded by kjda KJ Dell’Antonia sent from my iPhone
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Small world Originally uploaded by kjda KJ Dell’Antonia sent from my iPhone Oh–why is it a small world? I never came back to this (similarly, I owe the blogosphere a post about why I don’t regret adopting Rory, and happily that one gets easier to write every day). This is Jan–she’s our beloved babysitter Heather’s step-mother-in-law. And she knows Miss Nanette and Mr. Dana. They are the only people she knows in all of China, and they are one of […]
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At the end of the next post I talk about a tough question posed by a friend (and maybe it shouldn’t be a tough question–more like a tough one to really think about). I said I thought I shouldn’t even ask myself that. I was wrong. The tough questions–even the ones that won’t change–are exactly the ones we should always ask ourselves. The short answer to mine is no. I’ll try to get to the long answer later this weekend.
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I’m still waiting for the day when life just feels normal. Last night I dreamed that one of our neighbors covered the slopes of their yard with snow somehow, and I walked down the road with Rory, Wy, Lily and Sam and we just happened to stumble across it. It would be Rory’s first time playing in the snow, and I wanted to see her reaction, but she’d wandered off, and somehow we were surrounded by hundreds of families, all […]
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No consideration, he shouts, nodding to his friends. A little quiet, please, kids. Quiet! Thye don’t even apologize. His gaze fixes on me. Aren’t you even going to apologize? You’re not going to say you’re sorry? I’d really only just tuned in to him. He was sitting at a table at the Boloco we’d just eaten at, with three other moms and 5 other kids, outside, looking at the little town square our kids had been tearing round. I recognized […]
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Today’s Double X post actually has to do with parenting and kids–something I usually don’t talk about there. Anyone else notice that people responded to the suggestion that the CDC might recommend circumcision for boys in a VERY different way than they responded to the recommendation of the HPV vaccine for girls? To vent about the double standard, head over to Double X.
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After we went to Cape Cod, I had this whole post in my head about how, when you were young, you always imagined you’d go on vacation and come back changed, and now I had–I’d come back fully accepting and loving Rory and happy with our family. And then the last day had its ups and downs, and I lost the feeling, and since then, it’s gone wildly back and forth. It’s scheduling time, and change time, and as much […]
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So, below a couple of pictures we have a lovely picture of the candy-smeared Rory. I haven’t figured out her relationship with food yet, or what I should be trying to do for her. She’s got some oddities–for example, she sucks down any sugary drink she’s given, from Sprite (thank you, China) to chocolate milk, before eating. Some foods she just mainlines–any snack, for example, or the little boxes of cereal they serve at a breakfast buffet. Either you take […]
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Taking Beauty Very Seriously Originally uploaded by kjda KJ Dell’Antonia sent from my iPhone
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Rory’s first haircut (with us) Originally uploaded by kjda And the last time all three littles get their hair cut on the same day. Whew! KJ Dell’Antonia sent from my iPhone
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Tomorrow’s dinner! Originally uploaded by kjda KJ Dell’Antonia sent from my iPhone
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The Candy Addict Sleeps Originally uploaded by kjda Everyone chose something at the Chatham Candy Manor for the ride home. Rory’s choice–a long twisty lollipop. Which she did not lick–she ate. Bite, crunch. Three minutes into the ride, we turned around to find this. KJ Dell’Antonia sent from my iPhone
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On the "Holly" Originally uploaded by kjda KJ Dell’Antonia sent from my iPhone
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Tonight we sent all four kids to the kids’ dinner at the hotel where we’re staying on Cape Cod. All together, all in their matching striped shirts. Lily and Sam went when we were here once before, so they were into it–Lily especially–and that brought Wyatt along, and Rory just know of got swept up. I’m honestly not a hundred percent sure that she understood that Rob and I wouldn’t go too. But she went. We sat on the veranda […]
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The pool here is a gradual entry pool, and when Rory decided to swim without her life jacket today I thought I’d better keep a close eye on her–as in, no magazine, real watching. It’s so easy to start swimming where you can touch and end up where you can’t. And she did, about three minutes after she got in. I was pretty far away, and I saw her some up a couple of times, looking a little desperate, and […]
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