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.
Oh, hell. What’s “fair,” anyway? Who came up with that concept? I hate fairness. This morning, in the car, we had something like this: Wyatt: That’s MINE! Give it back! Rory: [silence] Wyatt: MOMMY! She has my motorcycle! Give it back. Rory: You didn’t say please. Wyatt: PLEAASE give it back! It’s mine! Rory: [silence] Wyatt: Roo-RYYY! Rory: You didn’t say it nice. Wyatt: Pleasegivemebackmymotorcycle. Rory: I’m not gon’ give it back unless you ask me nice. Wyatt: GIVE IT […]
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I think we’re going to be eating this all summer long. It’s far, far easier than it looks. Yes, I make my own pasta noodles. It’s what takes it from good to insanely spectacular. Four eggs, about 2 1/4 cups of flour, in the mixer, then with the dough hook, then kneaded on the counter: Roll it out. I find it’s better to let the sheets of dough rest and dry a little (as in, five minutes, while rolling out […]
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I’ve been all worried about my own balance, but we’ve achieved some very important OTHER feats of balance around here: Rory and Wyatt are both officially bike riders. This is big news in a family where biking counts. The VT 50 for Rob (50 miles of mountain biking). 50 in the Prouty for me and Sam, once with him on a tagalong and this year, I think, with him on his own wheels. Last year he did 35. Mountain bike […]
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I’m torn. Here I am, having my lovely evening all nice and quiet in my quiet empty house. I have eaten a dinner of junk food (a little ironic, given that my XX Factor post today was on the perils of fake food–but it wasn’t fake, just junk). And I am about to get some writing done, although clearly, given the hour, not as much as I had hoped or expected. I am a little lonely. I miss the pressure […]
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I am going to be in my house alone. This is not an invitation to come party (or come rob me: I will have you know that I have a very fierce if kinda fluffy looking dog). It’s a preliminary celebration. I am so looking forward to this, and when it is over, I may be a little weepy. Rob is going out of town for a couple of nights, and I was invited to a reception at a local […]
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It’s not official (this according to Sam) because “we never have school on Saturdays.” We: Planned a summer vacation. Cleaned the playroom. Built a giant fort in the clean playroom. Made a headband from the official American Girl Doll “have-your-mommy-make-you-a-headband” kit. Had a thunderstorm. Put out a sprinkler and our sad excuse for a wading pool (the former Little Tykes frog-shaped sandbox. I’m getting complaints). And wrapped up with a styling session: Was it an awesome day? I’d say so. […]
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What’s in a name? Everything. Every thought your parents had about who you might be. A goodly dose of who your father’s family was, and possibly, depending on your circumstances, your mother’s as well. If you’re adopted, what’s in a name? Maybe everything, maybe nothing. Casually (as in the non-legal name you’d give, say, a gymnastics class), Rory’s name says nothing much about her except that she’s the child of two people who liked the name Rory. Her name is […]
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Who doesn’t know that the true reason we drive our kids all over to activity after activity is that we ourselves wish we had had these opportunities or these skills? To be someone who, if the chance arose, would surprise everyone by, say, sitting down at the piano for a sing-a-long, executing a perfect dive into the lake, shushing down the narrowest of ski trails or jumping a horse over a fence? (Apparently I have a secret desire to be […]
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You Never Walk Alone Originally uploaded by kjda There’s an audience for everything in our family. KJ Dell’Antonia sent from my iPhone —
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Scientists say we all believe negative things happen more often than they do because we remember negative events more clearly and assign them more value. This is why everyone in your town believes that each one always choses the longer line at the grocery store even though that cannot be true, and is where all those heavily sighed “this always happens to me” for which teenagers are renowned come from. The cure for this comes in celebrating the small good […]
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Whoa. Whose idea was it to pack June so chock-ful of events and then send them rocketing at me so fast? These two: Had, of course, a concert. The night before Lily’s birthday party (I have never, ever been so happy to pay exorbitant-sounding sums of money for cupcakes in my whole life; it was worth every penny). They sang their hearts out for 12 songs (which was short, by Montessori standards) and are still singing them pretty constantly, especially […]
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First of all, let me say that I angsted over this pinata. I don’t even like pinatas. I mean, I did, when I was little and lived in San Antonio, where some kids had pinatas hanging in their rooms from trips to Nuevo Laredo (in more peaceful times). Me, I had a large ceramic piggy bank I believed was decorated in traditional fashion. No one I knew had ever had a pinata to break, although we had heard of them. […]
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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.
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Tomorrow is “field day” at Sam and Lily’s school. Lily broke down when she found that she was on the “yellow” team. She did not, she felt, know anyone on the yellow team! Or have a yellow shirt! After some digging it developed that because tomorrow is also her birthday, she wanted to wear something special. Which would not be an old yellow t-shirt, or even a new yellow t-shirt. I wish, she finally said, I had a shirt like […]
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“Was I so nice to get Wyatt his lunch box?” “Did I throw that ball just great?” “Is this paper airplane so awesome?” Rory wants approval. Specifically, she wants my approval, and I’m torn. On the one hand, I buy my Parenting on Track guru’s take on praise: kids should learn to value what they think of their accomplishments, not just what we think. She suggests we turn questions like that back on the asker: “Do you think you were […]
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Every night, right around this time, we hear it. Stomp stomp STOMP STOMP STOMP Click-squeak-slam! STOMP STOMP STOMP. Pause. Stomp stomp STOMP STOMP STOMP Slam- squeak-click! STOMP STOMP STOMP. It’s Rory, getting up to go to the bathroom, slamming open the bedroom door, then returning and slamming it shut. She doesn’t need or want help. She feels fully confident in making her own way on this. Doesn’t turn on a light. Her siblings could sleep through anything, and they sleep […]
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The City Slicker and the Snapping Turtle Originally uploaded by kjda We found this guy (actually, I think it’s a girl) on the road today. I wasn’t actually SURE it was a snapping turtle, and I figured Lily could outrun it in a pinch–plus, I needed some scale. So I made her get in the picture. Which the next person to pull over clearly thought was CRAZY. My plan was to cautiously approach the turtle from the rear, pick it […]
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I’m not sure what inspired this. Lily loves to create art, and I think she may long for more of an audience for her work. And I’m not sure what teacher could resist it.
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Rice Krispies Before It was a forty minute drive to today’s party, a farewell to one of Sam’s hockey teammates whose family is moving to Wisconsin. The Big Question: How many Rice Krispie Treats (did I say Rice Krispie Treats? I meant, light, crunchy, sweet, salty, buttery, perfect Rice Krispie Treats) would make it? Rice Krispies After The worst part of this is that there was only one person in the car: Me.
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I’m not sure what pushed me over the edge. I was on it anyway. A wonderful friend accidentally pushed all my “terrible parent” buttons when I tried to explain why I’ll never take all 4 kids to NYC. “I just wanted to share the place I love with them,” she declared, and I realized: that’s the last thing I want to do. I want to keep the place I love, and have all of my professional interactions, and get work […]
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Lily, after a massive tantrum episode, chose to sleep last night on the small loveseat on the landing outside the kids’ room. (Long story short, she refused to make her lunch for school during the time Rob allotted for that duty, and then lost it when bedtime arrived and lunch was not made. And then some.) Rory couldn’t take it. We kept hearing the “bang” of the door to their room (which slams when the windows are open) and the […]
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The Real Reason My Kids Will Learn to Be Responsible Originally uploaded by kjda This is Rory wearing Lily’s shorts for soccer. Rory is wearing Lily’s shorts for soccer because although I noticed this morning that she was wearing long pants, I promptly forgot, and although I brought everyone’s shirts and shin guards and cleats, I forgot to bring her shorts, and I also forgot all three soccer balls. In theory, they should pack for soccer themselves. But I have […]
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When I’m driving—which is to say, when I’m stuck in the car, cruising along and unable to do anything other than contemplate the meaning of Sam’s favorite song (“Fireflies,” a song that gives “MacArthur Park” a run for its money in terms of its general air of having a much deeper meaning than anything that’s actually said ) if he has control of the iPod, or belt out a few of my own favorites (I favor “If You’re Gonna Play […]
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In theory, our kids have responsibilities. And they do—they pack and unpack their own lunches, they each have a weekly chore, they’re responsible for cleaning up their toys and getting their laundry in the bin. And, of course, they have privileges. We feed them, right? And take them places. And periodically buy them stuff. We’ve been having some trouble, Rob and I, figuring out how those things were supposed to be tied together. Surely if you didn’t do your responsibilities, […]
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I love iced coffee. I am so not a coffee person otherwise, in that I really can’t distinguish good coffee from bad (although a really great cup might catch my attention), don’t care how it’s brewed, won’t notice if you stew it for a while and really, really can’t tell where you got your beans or how and when they were ground. When it comes to hot coffee, I’m a philistine, and I drink it with plenty of milk and […]
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I’m on a long overdue mission to update my blogroll, which has become sadly dated. (Since I found one link that hadn’t been updated in 786 days, I’m guessing that’s when I last linked anyone up.) I’m bringing on some of those hip new things all the other kids have, like the title of the last post and the timing of the update, which I love when my fellow bloggers kindly provide to me. I’m a big blogroll click-thru fan. […]
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I have a problem. Well, I have a lot of problems, but this is a specific problem. I have these books. Actually, I probably have a thousand of them, but most of them are not a problem. Most of them are beloved members of the household. But these…I’m not so sure about these. Here’s what happened. Today I was inspired to take every single thing out of the kids room (I promise to share the result of that one later, […]
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Do you do the preface? As in, “I love my kids, but?†Or, maybe more relevantly, “I love [my adopted child], but?†Dawn at Create a Family and the bloggers of The Adopted Ones were talking, recently, about that twinge of disloyalty that comes when we decide to really dish about our families. It works both ways: “I love my mom, but†is coming, and it’s probably come out of your own mouth, too. The question is, do adoptive parents—and […]
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I’m a big fan of Laura Vanderkam’s 168 Hours: You Have More Time Than You Think–a time management book with the premise that most of us do have time for the things we actually WANT to do. It changed my life in at least one way: I almost never say I “just don’t have time” for things anymore. Instead, I say (at least to myself) “I don’t want to give my time to that.” Because that’s nearly always the truth. […]
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I’ve just finished reading Anne Lamott’s Imperfect Birds, which, long and very absorbing story short, is about an AA mother, her newly druggy teen and her writerly second husband, and how the mom and stepdad wise up to their too-clever daughter. On the surface. Under that, it is, of course, about a lot of things, and not the least is how crushed the mother is by how late it is with her daughter. She’s been her mother, and not always […]
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Whew. It is Sunday night. We had a long, nice weekend of mellow togetherness. Helped Sam with his model of Spaceship Earth. Took Lily, Wyatt and Rory to the bookstore with their wallets. Went to a grown-up party (for us, there were a few kids there but hey, not ours!) and made new friends, a rarity in our town, where a) we tend to already know most people and b) (and probably more relevantly) people only talk to people they […]
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Apparently the urge to clean, like spring itself, comes late to me. There are still hockey bags in our hallway. Ski boots in the closet. Too-heavy coats (although not full-on ski jackets) in the cubbies and I am tired of it, and tired of the piles in the kitchen, and tired of the piles in the bedroom, and tired of the piles in general. Maybe even tired enough to actually do something about it. But not alone. I called three […]
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I’ve always tended to react to evenings—you know, after bedtime, when you regroup and try to figure out what on earth went wrong and how others could change to make it better—based on how the kids were. “Lily was in rare form,” I say of my girl with the curl right in the middle of her forehead. Or “Wyatt just could NOT leave Rory alone.” And I think of how things went—whether there were bedtime books, whether I’m glugging the […]
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Wyatt and Rory brought these home from school earlier this week. They were part of a much-heralded art project that is truly Montessori in theme: using clay, wax and soft wood, they were exploring different carving mediums! That seemed fine to me, if a little high-falutin’; I don’t tend to question what they do on Montessori time. They go, they come back, they seem happy, I detect learning—this is all I ask. I displayed their art on the kitchen counter […]
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Last night, in a lucky confluence of events, I unloaded my pasta machine from the basket I’d taken to Wyatt’s classroom (biannual pasta-making demonstration) at the same moment as I began contemplating mixing up tortilla dough—and a brilliant idea was born. Any good Texan knows that the only real tortillas are handmade tortillas, and that putting “handmade” on a baggie and then selling them in the grocery fridge section really does not count. I’ll eat those, but only under duress. […]
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When we adopted Rory, almost two years ago now, she was 3 1/2, 6 months older than our youngest, Wyatt. All of our other kids were biological kids (Sam was 7 and Lily 5), and Rory was our first (and only) foray into adoption. We “adopted out of birth order,” and as I remember it, the decision process went something like this: our social worker, Kathleen, a big, comfortable woman with shorn white hair and a confident, rolling walk, had […]
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I love to grow food. I’m pretty indifferent about flowers. I mean, flowers are nice. I like it when there ARE flowers. But there’s a limit to how much time and effort I will invest in flowers, and I generally reach it about the moment when I get to the farm stand, note the huge selection and decide to go get a coffee. (Good thing the farm stand has coffee!) But growing food–whole meals so local we are talking steps […]
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I love my NPR. In the car, it’s pretty much solid NPR all day long, unless it’s Car Talk or one of the guest-oriented programs has someone on that I’m just not into. But NPR creates conflicts—namely, that all of my kids consider themselves, as conversationalists, way, way, WAY more interesting than even the most fascinating NPR story. And so should I, right? They will only be young enough to want to share with me, for a 25 minute drive, […]
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Today: Lily’s lacrosse. Lily’s lacrosse takes place from 3:15-4:15 at the green in front of the elementary school in one of the next towns over. On the down side, it’s a solid 20 minutes there from Lily’s school, which gets out at … 3. This means we WILL be late. No matter how hard I try. I can be bright and shiny and first in the carpool line, and there we will still be: late. On the plus side, Lily’s […]
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This has never happened to me before, and I’m so happy that it waited until I was ready. Last night, Guo Ji Mama and I were at her son’s lacrosse game on our local fields. We ate a picnic from the Mexican place, left most of our respective broods happily playing in the park and sauntered over to sort of semi-watch the game. After a while, a largish blonde woman approached. “Are zose your kids alone in ze playground?” she […]
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What a day. Let’s just say that the amount of crying that went on this afternoon was stunning, and that was before I told the kids that the (old) dog had (easily, I hope painlessly) died this morning. I have had better days. So, I guess, had she… But (so I won’t start crying) back to the crying. I told the kids this am that I would bring them home for an hour before soccer. We take Lily’s friend B […]
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It must be spring, because amidst all of the outside activities and the going outside and the going back outside comes… cleaning. Sort of. At a very low key. I have a pretty high tolerance for the debris level in our house at the moment, because while dealing with it—putting, say, the hockey bags away for the year—would give me a pleasant high and offer some lasting pleasure, it would have to come at the expense of other things , […]
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Let me just say: actual adults could now ride in every single seat of my car. Rob’s boss’s wife. Your mother. Martha Stewart. (I would let any of them ride in the passenger seat. Of course. But say they were ALL in the car.) Now they could ride. I would not have to say “Oh, my God, I am SO SORRY.” Or “I have a towel. Do you want a towel? Seriously, take the towel.” Or “Shit, I don’t know […]
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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, […]
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Crafty Lily Originally uploaded by kjda Lily has crafty instincts in more ways than one. By all rights, today should have been soccer. Normally, we play soccer in the rain around here. We do not let a little 50 degree weather or drizzle stop us! In fact, we have, and have had since Sam was this age and playing in this particular soccer (a spring fundraiser for the Dartmouth men’s and women’s soccer teams), special soccer gloves. Well, they’re not […]
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Should You Need to Ask for What You Want? Originally uploaded by kjda "Ball!" Rory’s tennis ball ice cream has rolled away, under my feet. "Ball! Bally!" "Yep," I agree. "Bally." Rory sighs. "Please can you get my ball?" "Sure." I roll it back. We repeat a variation on this about every other hour. She will sit in the public restroom, grunting "uumph! Uumph!" if she can’t reach the toilet paper. Ditto for too high paper towels. Struggle with an […]
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Guess who is the only child to just come in every day and empty her lunchbox out without direction? Rory. Guess who remembers to do her morning chore without being asked? Rory. Guess who jumped up and got the crayons when I reminded them that Mother’s Day boxes were being mailed tomorrow? Rory. She is so alert to any opportunity to please. Not just me, either. Wasn’t I so nice, Wyatt, she asks if she gets him a cup for […]
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Push, Push, Push Originally uploaded by kjda Both of my daughters are more like me–in all the ways I dislike myself most–than my sons, and so they are gifted with the power to push my buttons in ever more dramatic ways. Plus, and probably more relevantly, they WANT TO. Thus, here is Lily, tonight after dinner and an otherwise perfectly pleasant night. She carries a slice of apple in and sits on the couch and looks at me. You’re not […]
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You cannot do everything, right? I THOUGHT I was keeping that in mind this spring. I swear that I said no to lots of things. No baseball or tball. No gymnastics. No dance. No starting the violin. No art. No basket weaving, or underwater polo, or baking classes, or pottery, or…well, no baseball, anyway. That’s a classic spring sport! And we are not doing it! So it should all be good and work out for me, because I did say […]
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