Thanks for looking, all sincerely helpful answers are up-voted. I have some date input fields that are there when the page loads and a bunch that get generated dynamically.
This is what I ended up using. It takes advantage of live and focus in newer jQuery
live
focus
$.datepicker.setDefaults({ dateFormat: 'yy-mm-dd', ... }); $('input.date').live('focus', function() { $(this).datepicker().datepicker('show'); true; });