Connecting the Dots

Any mother who wasn’t at the top of the social pyramid growing up (and maybe even those who were) has meditated about what we’d like to tell our own daughters as they head into middle school and beyond. Don’t make everything a drama. Act confident, and people will be happy to be around you. Relax. Say what you mean, don’t apologize, don’t back down. We know, of course, that those aren’t lessons that can be taught by your mother, but […]

If you’re a golf fan (and even if you’re not) Dustin Johnson inadvertently provided you with a great “teachable moment”during Sunday’s PGA championship. If you missed it (or just don’t do golf), Johnson was leading the field on the 18th hole when his tee shot fell slightly to the right of the fairway, into a “bunker” (that’s a sand trap) that had been “walked on, kicked and trampled by thousands of fans over the last week,” as HuffPo’s Nancy Armour […]

It was one of the rare goals of summer that I actually pulled off at our house: last night was the peak of the Perseid meteor showers, and my 9-year-old and I stayed up for it. In all honestly, it neared being a bust, clouds drifted overhead frequently, and he was so sleepy (I actually let him fall asleep outside, then went out and woke him at midnight for viewing) that I think he only clocked one or two meteors. […]

Today we rocked. Originally uploaded by kjda I have been wanting a garden gate, instead of a flap of deer fence, all year. KJ Dell’Antonia sent from my iPhone —

What we did today Originally uploaded by kjda See below… KJ Dell’Antonia sent from my iPhone — KJ Dell’Antonia www.kjdellantonia.com

First we drilled Originally uploaded by kjda Well, first we went and bought a couple of things, like hinges, at our friend Seth’s hardware store. But this is why I am more fun than Daddy. I let sam do all the drilling.

Then we hung it up Originally uploaded by kjda I think I have these backwards.. KJ Dell’Antonia sent from my iPhone — KJ Dell’Antonia www.kjdellantonia.com 917-647-6600 Contributing Editor, Kiwi Magazine Read me on Slate’s XXFactor blog www.slate.com/blogs/blogs/xxfactor and Babble’s Strollerderby blogs.babble.com/strollerderby/ Twitter.com/kjda

We got back from vacation so late last night that there was no bedtime rountine, only bed. Tonight we had routine, only I decided to switch it up a bit: on vacation, I started reading them nightly chinks of a chapter book (The Four Story Mistake). Everyone liked it…on vacation. But now that we’re back, Rory wanted…well, I don’t know what she wanted, exactly, but suffice it to say it was not the chapter when Oliver brings out the sleds […]

Jess, I love that women over 40 are dominating on magazines covers and, even better, in the movie theater. I noticed it too—and I also noticed Laura Linney (46) on the cover of last week’s New York Times Magazine, that More magazine’s circulation is increasing (cover girls have to be over 40; this month’s Kyra Sedgwick is 44), and that the inside of Elle magazine, not just the cover, offers articles clearly aimed at women past the ingenue stage: recovering […]

There are one or two minor things I don’t like about this parenting gig. The early rising, for example. The midnight sheet-changing. The diapers weren’t my favorite (past that!) and the Sisyphean dishwasher and laundry moments do get me down. But there is one thing, one single thing, one thing that’s somehow fallen to me in our house (all of those other things were or are shared tasks) that really pushes my buttons. One thing that looms over my head […]

One notable thing about blogging is that people frequently send you things to try out, review, or just read and possibly relay to interested readers. We don’t do much of that at Strollerderby. We’re more scoop than stuff. But then again, it’s not often that someone sends you a link to a website that does exactly what you’d always wished there was a website to do, and tosses in an iPhone app for good measure. A Day’s Outing is the […]

If we truly want equality among races, we have to talk to kids about racism. Fortunately, there’s an app for that.

A Rory-ism Originally uploaded by kjda "I got see that." "I got look." "Let me see!" Rory never believes us. There’s no more, we say, as in no more chips in the bowl or no more tea in the pot. No yogurt in the fridge. No chocolate milk. She never, ever takes our word for it. She trusts us in every other way: dress her, lift her down from the counter, jump into our arms from a brick wall, but […]

From this month’s O Magazine, perhaps the most off-base advice Dr. Phil has ever given. To a SAHM unhappy without her career, Dr. Phil says, in essence, tough. “Bloom where you’re planted” has never sounded so patronizing. A mother of two writes in, saying that she and her husband agreed, before having kids, that she would stay home until they were in full-time school. Now that the kids, aged 2 and 4, are actually here, demanding snacks and generally absorbing […]

At the NYT’s Motherlode blog, Lisa Belkin is reporting a follow up to a study that came out several years ago reporting that the children of working mothers were “cognitively delayed” compared to those of stay-at-home moms. Five years on, those same researchers followed those same kids and found those slight delays in some areas were outweighed by benefits in others, meaning that “the overall effect of first-year maternal employment on child development is neutral.” (No word on whether the […]

Last week, Sierra and Carolyn were discussing the places where kids just don’t belong. Bars. Comedy clubs. Nightclubs (I sense a theme here). I’ve got one more spot to add to the list, and it’s not even a place where you’re there to drink: Spas. No one who isn’t old enough to pay for her pampering with her own hard-earned cash belongs in a spa, and no 6-year-old needs a pedicure. As for spas actually meant for tots, I’m appalled. […]

What Really Intellectual Familes Originally uploaded by kjda Do on Vacation

It’s August. Do you know where your summer’s gone? I don’t. Some of it’s gone to the pool, for the kind of lazy afternoons spent on towels eating popsicles that I remember as a kid. Some of it’s been whiled away by my nine-year-old’s determined statement that it was The. Most. Boring. Day. Ever, which, if you ask me, isn’t really a bad thing. It’s in the garden, sure, it’s in our newly cleaned out garage. But what I want […]

Vacation begins Originally uploaded by kjda KJ Dell’Antonia sent from my iPhone

Annals of Useless Gadgets Originally uploaded by kjda Makes breakfast effortless! KJ Dell’Antonia sent from my iPhone —

Affluent families are having more children. Some working moms have “six, seven, even 14 kids,” according to Forbes. Movie stars like Angelina Jolie? More children. Reality television stars: having more children. Actually, that’s why they’re reality television stars, but you can see the trend. More children. Bigger families. Four is the new two. Why? In the same Forbes piece, David Hacker of the State University of New York at Binghamton says kids are now ” ‘luxury goods’ which people believe […]

Rory is standing in the garage screaming. Right now, live action, I am live-blogging the screaming. How cool am I? She is welcome to come in at any time. The doors are open. We can all hear the sobbing, stomping and beating on the wall (next to the open door). Rory is in the garage screaming because she broke a known rule, one that everyone is careful about, one that she herself has been careful about many times. She sat […]

Time magazine’s cover for the week of Aug. 9 shows a young woman, Aisha, who had her ears and nose cut off by the Taliban for fleeing an abusive husband. Time managing editor Richard Stengal says Aisha “wants the world to see the effect a Taliban resurgence would have on the women of Afghanistan, many of whom have flourished in the past few years.” No Westerner, seeing this picture, could want anything but to promote an Afghanistan in which this […]

It sounds like the ultimate in helicopter parenting—not to mention the ultimate bad idea. If your fashion-design major daughter can’t get a job, why not buy her one? The Wall Street Journal is reporting on what might be a recession trend: parents “giving their kids the business.” Buying a “Pita Pit” (surely the subliminal 90210 reference is intentional; who could resist the mental image of Brenda’s dad handing over the keys?), a “College Hunks Hauling Junk,” or a “Fibrenew” franchise […]

Not a Baby Originally uploaded by kjda In June, I was at the pool and kept hearing, I thought, Rory crying. Again and again I’d look and see … An angry baby, about a year old, making the noise Rory makes when she cries, exactly. And not the noise she makes when she really cries–the noise she makes when she fake cries because she’s angry, or needs attention, or is outraged at the general un fairness of life. I decided […]

Mold in the ice machines. A cockroach crawling over the soda dispensers. Fruit flies swirled into the margaritas (at least you won’t be buying your kids those). ESPN reporter Paula Lavigne culled through hundreds of inspection reports for every stadium across the country and found that as unappealing as most classic stadium food is to begin with (hot dogs rolling under heat lamps, cardboard pretzels) the truth is even worse than we imagined, with temperature violations, unwashed hands and mouse […]

Ok, so no one really needs a how-to manual on any of those activities. But the WSJ’s Bonds columnist, Elizabeth Bernstein, says that fighting can actually be good for your relationship. If you do it right. Couples who argue well are happier. Couples who roll their eyes, criticize each other’s opinions or regularly stalk out of the room in fury? Well, they’re more likely to split, before or after they get married. On the other hand, couples who don’t argue […]

In my ongoing quest to get my rising fourth-grader to read more, I downloaded A Wrinkle in Time onto my iPad (which he’s otherwise not allowed to touch). He read a few chapters, lost his place a few times, changed the type color, changed it back, and then got caught up in a paperback copy of Holes that his school sent home for summer reading. When he finished it and declared it his favorite book ever, I asked him if […]

The Annie E. Casey Foundation is a private charitable organization, dedicated to helping build better futures for disadvantaged children in the United States. If you’re an NPR listener, you’ve heard the name. The Foundation just released its annual KIDS COUNT Data book, in which it compiles markers for child-well-being in all fifty states. This is the 2008 data, and overall, things are looking bleak for the youngest citizens. The number of children living in poverty rose to 18% in 2008, […]

How is this not getting more news coverage? I know, Wikileaks has compromised the “war on terror” and oil still oozes into the gulf, with a storm bearing down on it for good measure. I know, President Obama is going on The View. But for pure newsworthy entertainment value, how did the camera crews of the world manage to miss Kate Gosselin and her 8 Goss-lings going camping with Sarah Palin? You have to figure the shoe has yet to […]

Was it agreeing to move the piano lesson from 8 am (painful) to noon, interrupting my work time and necessitating that Lily and Sam, instead of being with the sitter until 1:30 and the scheduled birthday party (which I wanted to attend) had to be picked up and transported various places starting at 11:30? Was it in deciding to go to the party at all (I really wanted to, but in glorious retrospect, today probably should have been a work […]

I distinctly recall how badly I wanted to make money as a kid. I remember lemonade stands, getting $1 each for ironing my father’s shirts and, later, mowing lawns. I remember the first thing I did with my own money, too: I walked straight to Skaggs Albertson’s, which sold—wait for it—Charlie’s Angels trading cards. I remember once debating between Fruit Stripes gum and a book, and having my mother press me towards the book, which would last longer. I went […]

How We Spent Our Day Originally uploaded by kjda The other half is equally impressive. Sam helped willingly for 5 hours. We did say we would pay him, but we never said how much…and he seriously never once griped. And it was HOT. I am so proud. Plus, holy crap, look at the garage. Of course I didn’t take a picture of the dumpster pile. Yesterday was my birthday, and I got some lovely gifts (silverware and a shirt from […]

9 year olds still love playgrounds Originally uploaded by kjda Sam is always the one on the sports field and never has time for the playground. We were going to the pool, but it’s 70 and mildly drizzly…perfect playground weather, really. And without Lily, our threesome tension is loosened…I am sure Wy and Rory will find something to argue about soon, but they haven’t yet. Sam just finished his last of three straight weeks of camp. Too much, in a […]

The New York Times’ Motherlode blog has a plea for advice from a young mother who says parenting is “ruining her marriage.” I scarcely need to offer you a synopsis of her plaint: Essentially, she performs singing puppet shows with cutlery while her spouse is thumbing through his e-mail on his BlackBerry. Who hasn’t heard that before? In fact, this month’s Parents magazine highlights an argument so nearly identical to this one for its article on “How to Fight in […]

Sam’s Lunch Today Originally uploaded by kjda I am either the worst or the best mom ever. KJ Dell’Antonia sent from my iPhone

Lisa Ray and her family are boycotting Disney. All of it, from ABC to ESPN to Family Fun magazine to the last tiny little Disney princess sticker in the basket at the doctor’s office. Why? Well, she blames Disney for ousting the Center for a Commercial-Free Childhood from its Harvard-based offices after the CCFC successfully pushed Disney to offer refunds to everyone who’d bought Baby Einstein videos from June 2004-September 2009. But really, she just hates Disney, of course. What […]

Do I even have to define the 5-second rule for you? Of course not. It’s long since passed from winking mom commentary into the national vernacular. In fact, it’s moved from folk lore to science: there are actually multiple studies on when the “rule,” beloved of parents whose kids have dropped their only teething biscuit to the sidewalk, applies. So, does the 5-second rule stand up to science? Sometimes. Read more on Babble. There’s no great back story to this […]

Am I the only person out there that walks through her days with this constant load of guilt? I swear it’s why my back hurts all the time. My personal sack of guilt is so heavy that during the few moments of the week when it lifts, I think I should step on the scale. I literally walk through town with my shoulders drooping. I often have to remind myself that no, whatever I am doing at that moment is […]

Let’s say you’re the owner of a small but popular bakery and a gifted cake decorator with aspirations to be, say, the next Colette Peters. But how do you get there? Baking celebrity cakes would help. Writing a book, ditto. But somehow you’ve got to get the attention of the celebrities, and publishers insist that a book needs a “platform.” “Who’s going to buy a book by an unknown baker,” they demand, while you’re left moaning “but how do I […]

Cyberbully students are causing endless angst for schools who feel obligated to interfere when students bully and are bullied–but aren’t sure where the limitations of their authority lie. Legal wrangling about cyberbullying goes on–and so does the debate about what a parent’s role should be when it’s his kid on one side or the other of the online equation. Last week’s New York Times article spotlighted one parent who sued on behalf of his daughter, who was suspended from her […]

To add to the nature vs. nurture debate: One proposal that in some cases, nature will always win out. Dr. Richard Friedman, intrigued by reports from patients he knew to have been “more or less decent parents” that their adult children were mean, unkind, unsympathetic, and rude, suggests in the New York Times that “for better or for worse, parents have limited power to influence their children.” Maybe, he says of one patient’s child, “this young man was just not […]

We’re crazy for baby names. The marketing genius behind Nameberry.com knows it, and she knows that any time she can release some new scoop on who’s naming who what, the parenting world will pounce. We believe names matter, and we’re right: as Sierra wrote earlier this year, girly names doom a boy to teasing and poor-sounding names decrease your odds of success. As Time magazine put it, we want to be unique, but not too unique. Or maybe we do […]

Well, yeah. Little bit. We’ve long since conceded, of course, that these are not really Real Housewives. Many of them do not even have Real Breasts or Real Foreheads, let alone Real Checkbooks or Real Laundry Baskets. The pleasure of the Real Housewives lies in the fact that they’re not real at all. As for the Real Catfight that’s been Really Hyped: well, let’s just say that that’s not even Real Hair that got pulled. This isn’t reality television. It’s […]

Add this to the list of things that I’m apparently supposed to worry about, to which I don’t think my own parents gave more than a passing thought: Recent research results on moving during childhood show it’s harmful in the long run. Relocating parents of extroverted kids needn’t worry so much, but those who’ve spawned introverts and other “neurotic” types can add another brick to the never-ending load of guilt. With all due respect to the idea that knowing more […]

The Gosselins have been another of my guilty pleasures ever since my husband, flicking channels one night after a day of moving house with a six-month old, a two-year-old and a five-year-old, came across Jon attempting to put all six toddlers into ski suits and we settled in for a good bout of schadenfreude. I resisted their pull last season as the marriage imploded (just too prurient) but I can watch Kate parent her eight on her own with only […]

Fall Guy Originally uploaded by kjda This is a little suction cup guy we have had for at least eight years. Isn’t it funny how some things just stick around? I am a big purger of things, but somehow, some stuff sticks. (I am thinking, for example, of the ancestral family beach towels. I have beach towels that I’ve had since I was five.) Bear with me, I do have a point. At mile 28 or so today, Sam’s wheel […]