Raising Devils

At the Detroit airport Originally uploaded by kjda. KJ Dell’AntoniaI just want to say that Lily has a matching sweater too, but she took it off because she got hot. (Please attribute any drastic spelling and punctuation errors to my poor thumb-typing and creative autocorrect.)

Lily eats ice cream Originally uploaded by kjda. KJ Dell’Antonia (Please attribute any drastic spelling and punctuation errors to my poor thumb-typing and creative autocorrect.)

On the T Originally uploaded by kjda. KJ Dell’Antonia (Please attribute any drastic spelling and punctuation errors to my poor thumb-typing and creative autocorrect.)

Sam in NYC Originally uploaded by kjda. KJ Dell’Antonia (Please attribute any drastic spelling and punctuation errors to my poor thumb-typing and creative autocorrect.)

Rob is out of town for half the week, so it’s pretty much a race with decent SAG stops for me. Get up! Get dressed! Get your coat on ! Get your boots on! Where’s your lunch? Why aren’t your boots on? Let’s go! [interval of school and babysitter and work] get in the car! We’ve got to go get someone else! Got to drop them off! Got to get home! Run! And this is just my inner monologue….

Haircuts! Originally uploaded by kjda. KJ

Now I am Dangerously Cheesy Originally uploaded by kjda. Comic created with Comic Life from plasq – http://plasq.com

In the leaves Originally uploaded by kjda. KJ

On Halloween Originally uploaded by kjda. KJ

Happily playing Originally uploaded by kjda. KJ

2 dogs and a pilot Originally uploaded by kjda. KJ

Caterpillar princess Originally uploaded by kjda. KJ

Wyatt joins the party Originally uploaded by kjda.

Sam’s school Originally uploaded by kjda.

Lily and her haunted house Originally uploaded by kjda. KJ

It’s a little hard to tell, bit the shade of Originally uploaded by kjda. KJ

Sam and daddy watch their first world series in a bar Originally uploaded by kjda. KJ

I let Sam watch the first half of the first inning of the World Series tonight. A lot of the kids in his class are talking about it (we’re close to Boston and this is definitely Red Sox nation). It took 45 minutes of pregame to get to the batters. There were 8 or 10 rounds of commercials. The first one was funny and we both loved it so much we went back to see it again–a guy and some […]

Drawing outside on a beautiful fall day Originally uploaded by kjda. KJ

The skiing is not so good. Originally uploaded by kjda. KJ

The top of Holt’s Ledge Originally uploaded by kjda. KJ

Country living with raspberries Originally uploaded by kjda. KJ

And an elf. Originally uploaded by kjda. KJ

Raspberry picking (with Billy Idol) Originally uploaded by kjda. KJ

The end of the perfect playdate Originally uploaded by kjda. KJ

Dear Williams-Sonoma: I just received my order of assorted miscellaneous Halloween baking items and plastic bowls, and the minute I opened the first box, I was disappointed. Disappointed, annoyed and even pissed off. When I opened the second box, I felt even worse. Not because of the items I ordered, which are pretty much exactly the completely unnecessary but fun to have items I expected, but because you didn’t just send me a few pumpkin candies and a ghost-shaped spatula: […]

The view from the top Originally uploaded by kjda. KJ

On Bragg Hill Originally uploaded by kjda. KJ

Her own sense of style Originally uploaded by kjda. KJ

Halloween–and bedtime– came early Originally uploaded by kjda. KJ

At the Biltmore house in NC Originally uploaded by kjda. KJ

New sandbox! Originally uploaded by kjda. KJ

Lily and emily on the "caramel" Originally uploaded by kjda. KJ

Lily’s eating habits Originally uploaded by kjda. We’ve spent a lot of time defending the way we feed the kids–which is to pretty much offer whatever’s available at any meal all at once without commenting on what gets eaten. We do encourage trying new things and talk about food groupd and balance, but we never, ever make eating dessert conditional on eating anything else. If there’s dessert, you get it, no matter what. This worked great with Sam but seemed […]

Lily on her first day Originally uploaded by kjda. KJ

What we did while Sam was at school today. Originally uploaded by kjda. KJ

Sam is on the job. Originally uploaded by kjda. KJ

We’re having a party Saturday Originally uploaded by kjda. KJ

I can say, I think, even though we don’t own a scale (well, I think we must, but I don’t know where it is or whether we have batteries for it), that I have finally lost the baby weight. From all three babies. In fact, I’m a pnts size smaller than when I had Sam–which I suspect means nothing more than that pants sizing has changed, because I know what I was like then and what I’m like now, and […]

. . . Originally uploaded by kjda.

Wy’s first cone Originally uploaded by kjda.

I think I remain stubbornly convinced that we are, somehow, or will be, somehow, living the sort of life that is found primarily in the pages of, say, a J. Crew catalog. That handsome dogs will romp up to us as we pull sculls up on the banks of ponds, dressed with what Fitzgerald might have called enviable casualness. It is this illusion that leads me to participate in things like “tball on the green”. We do live in a […]

Two weeks ago: Nor’easter. No power. For three days. Skiing. 4 wheel drive car stuck in driveway. Now: Biking. Sat on the green green grass for soccer. Tomorrow, swim lessons (indoor, but still) and t-ball. What we do here is, we go to extremes.

Caddie stole a cookie right out of Wyatt’s hand today. I yelled at and chased her down, but the cookie retrieval operation was not a success. Wy pointed at her angrily and said “Ba Do!” I would call this an impressive stringing of two words together from an almost 13 month old, except that in our house, bad dog is really one word. Lily walked up to Wyatt today while they were watching a cartoon and I was making dinner, […]

The fortuitous convergence of a Sunday afternoon babysitter, a playdate for Sam and what’s probably (hopefully) the last big snow of the season encouraged Rob and I to head out on our “skate-skis” yesterday. Skate-skiing is nordic skiing with slightly different boots and bindings that allow you to skate instead of slide. One of my friends said it’s like running instead of walking, and that’s pretty close. It’s definitely more work than the old-fangled cross-country skis. It was only the […]

Wy’s party Originally uploaded by kjda. At lily’s school.

I belong to The Well and mostly frequent a really good freelancer group there, where I am middling to low on a totem pole that includes regular writers for Vogue, Wired and Salon but also people who don’t really see their byline in the national pubs very often, if at all. I love being a part of it. Today, I read an announcement that a fellow byliner just sold her first novel in a “major deal”. I was over the […]

Big Day for Wy Originally uploaded by kjda. Facing forward in a new seat!

Well, we lost three more of the total 7 fish that were living in our tank–all three “zippys”. We’ve lost 6 fish so far. There will be no more new fish in this aquarium until all spots are gone and the remaining fish have managed not to die for at least two weeks. BUT…it’s a little too soon to say, but Goldie and Stripey (the original fish) are looking better, and LIghtening, whom I’d long since given up as a […]