Raising Devils

See Below. Originally uploaded by kjda Can’t last, tho. KJ Dell’Antonia sent from my iPhone

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

I am on strike. Dinner has been provided; it was tasty. Children have been suitably entertained all afternoon and are now semi-appropriately occupied (2 children coloring: check. One child legos: check. Child making repeated thumping noises, followed again and again by by “ouch” from the playroom I am not so sure about, but hey, she’s not bothering me). Dinner has not been cleaned up. The kitchen, likewise, is a horrendous mess. Atrocious. Apparently someone failed to clean it last night […]

Don’t Let KJ Draw the Pigeonbrought to you by Livescribe To really enjoy this, go to “full screen” and, at the bottom of the screen as it starts, click the bottom wavy line which will “hide preview.” That lets the drawing appear from nothing. You can then go back to the blog (icon in top right corner) any time and it will stay that way.

Happy Hanukah! Originally uploaded by kjda KJ Dell’Antonia sent from my iPhone —

Somehow, through a series of events that’s a little hard to explain, I ended up running the administrative part of one of our local ski programs. Well, co- running it. On the one hand, certainly I am better off running it than I am at teaching kids to ski–I don’t mind coaching them at Nordic skiing, but I refuse to ride a ski lift with any child I’m not related to–but primarily, I’m deeply aware of what a huge mistake […]

A little office cleaning, as I’ve said before, is clearly in order: It is more than a little hard to type on this laptop. New plan: Step one: clear everything off the desk! Step two: Enjoy new work surface. Step three: Don’t turn around. New Office Cleaning Technique

I have managed, largely, to keep my goal of being softer with the kids going. This morning I found that verily, a soft answer doth turneth away the wrath even of a Lily who doesn’t like breakfast, couldn’t find the clothes she wanted and is generally grumpy (go find yourself something else for breakfast, fine, pretzels, pack it up carefully and bring it in the car). But oh, it has been a long afternoon. For starters, back in October I […]

I Am So Not the Person I Wish I Was Originally uploaded by kjda I am so mad at them. I am so mad at me. And I would just like to say right now that this is stupid, stupid, stupid. Wyatt and Rory each brought a pop tart in the car on the way to Lily’s after school lacrosse. For Sam and Lily, I brought Oreos. (for those of you who thought we ate some fantastic, snotty organic diet, […]

If I was trying to punish him for not telling me he needed a purple shirt, I failed miserably. (Happily, I wasn’t.) Because apparently it was a big hit.

Rory is still lousy at picking up social cues. And I’ve realized that this, above all things, is what she does that pushes my buttons. It’s part of what happened at the Aquatic Center (in the below post). I’ve realize that when I overreact to her, its often at one of those moments. I don’t care if she makes mistakes. I don’t care if she misbehaves (I do, but I don’t–you know what I mean.) I react in a normal, […]

Corn maze! 85 degrees in the corn maze, but: corn maze! Rory is alone in the picture because the last time we went to this farm, I apologized to one of the people who works here after overhearing him tell her not to touch something, and he came over to me, and I said I’m really very sorry, again, and added that if he had one thing on the whole farm that she shouldn’t touch and he hid it under […]

Look! It’s my plastic wrap! I love my plastic wrap. My mother gave it to me for my birthday. In, um, 2010. I finally get to use it, because we finally used up our old plastic wrap. We don’t use much plastic wrap, especially if it doesn’t really stick, and I have, as I invariably do, punched it open wrong and it doesn’t want to cut. So it took us more than a year to go through the box and […]

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 […]

On Motherlode at the end of this week: I was thinking that my idea to allow kids more “screen time” on the computer if they were doing creative things instead of just playing, as one commenter said, addictinggames.com was a good one–but most people are still arguing for full limits or none. And what I liked best about the New York Times Magazine’s “Homeschooling Anarchist Parents” article this week was the mother’s unabashed embracing of a parenting style I thought […]

New Family Members Originally uploaded by kjda The lady I got our kitten from assured me, a novice cat owner, that all kittens come with a free companion poodle. In retrospect I can see that this must not be true, but here we are. So far, it’s the calmest transition our house has ever seen… but then, we’ve been through some doozies.

This is my new office. This is the view from my new office. Do note the boxes in the foreground, and the complete absence of a desktop computer, and the boxes in the background. Deal is, new desktop–when there is a top of the desk to be seen. Meanwhile, it’s a fresh office start for me! I’m unpacking.

tones and ringtones message free In early party line systems this pattern was tones and ringtones message free code letter indicating who should pick up the phone, but today, with individual lines, the only surviving patterns are a single ring and double-ring, originally Morse code letters T and M respectively. banana ringtones Many of these sites are camouflaged to blend with existing environments, particularly in scenic areas. ringtones free mustang 3 billion by November, 2007[9], thus reaching ringtones free mustang […]

It’s raining here today. It also rained yesterday, and the day before that. The Day before that the sun was out for a bit in the morning, and then it…rained. Tomorrow we’re expecting rain, followed by clouds, which will be accompanied by rain. Oh, and then it’s going to rain. But not to worry, because the day after that, it’s going to rain. And, just in case you were a bit worried about drought, this weekend we’re expecting rain. I’m […]

sam did lily’s hair today., originally uploaded by kjda. Peeing scheißend außerhalb undhandjob Ford PatriciaAsian Babes-PiercingFrau Interrassischlespen Pissingass Bang and Bros titsMädchen minderjährige FuckingMütter in Mund Sperma den Spritzen Map

car loan new denver , car loan new denver driver, while talking on a cell phone, has response times of a driver in roughly the 40th percentile). private funding personal company loans In 1945, private funding personal company loans generation (0G) of mobile telephones was introduced. loan ba car private party dcredit He applied this patent to “cave radio” telephones and not directly to cellular telephony as loan ba car private party dcredit is currently understood. loan consolidation rate best […]

I wrote a book about reading to babies–and it’s been months since Lily has really let me read to her. She brings books, yes–but after a page she’s off for another book. She’d rather “read” to herself–and she does, she sits and talks and turns the pages–but like everything else, she just doesn’t want anyone to do it for her. But tonight, ar long last, she let me read. I happened to grab a handful of board books she hadn’t […]

Music class this week–our last class, my last one ever unless my better nature takes over on Wyatt’s behalf. Of course both kids were flawless, adorable, Lily dancing with her friend and Wyatt showing off his new clapping abilities. I realized, as I never had before, that the real reason to go to these things is to show off how cute and smart your kids are. I should perhaps say that the reason I’ve never spotted that before is that […]

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

New sandbox! Originally uploaded by kjda. KJ

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

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.)

It is sleeting something awful, with a little rain thrown in. The driveway is a sheet of ice. I am so glad I don’t have to go outside barefoot to pee. I just let the dog out, did you guess? Oh–and I am SO GLAD that tomorrow I will have my fancy new gas-guzzlin’ SUV that will actually get back up this driveway. Is it a hybrid, you may ask? Nope–because the foolish folks that make the hybrid don’t make […]

Spring in New England Originally uploaded by kjda. KJ Dell’Antonia Look! Sand buckets! Bike helmet! We are ready, anyway.

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

Lily and Wyatt at Fratello’s Originally uploaded by kjda. The funny thing is that It was Wyatt’s idea. KJ Dell’Antonia (Please attribute any drastic spelling and punctuation errors to my poor thumb-typing and creative autocorrect.)

I was glad you liked the kids singing. They were so pleased with themselves. And Sam really liked playing his piano into the phone to you. I don’t think that had ever occurred to him before. It was almost like you were here! Rob got everyone into pajamas tonight by sheer force of personality, since he can’t really manhandle them. I find that as exhausting as just sitting on them and doing it myself. Having him able to do it […]

Après ski nap Originally uploaded by kjda. KJ Dell’Antonia

Under the last patch of melting snow.. Originally uploaded by kjda KJ Dell’Antonia sent from my iPhone

My Bag of Rocks, originally uploaded by kjda. Geez, what’s in there, a bag of rocks? Why, yes! It’s a metaphorical bag of rocks, too. I am carrying a lot of baggage, lately.