Ah-ha! I'd love to know more about the internals at play here, but rearranging the "hide()" and the "appendTo" commands did the trick. For anyone else that might stumble across this thread:
$('<li />')
.append( $('<input type="text" />').val(item.a) )
.appendTo('myList').hide()
.slideDown()
...works great.
Thanks again for all the help!
Nate
