Kina is really taking advantage of Laurea’s sorbet naïveté while I’m out at a conference this week.

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True New Yorkers know the wonder of the panorama. It is a pilgrimage Kina last took almost exactly three years ago, but something has since clicked in her, and now she thinks it’s super cool. The plane, to be fair, is super cool.

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The spooky editions have arrived, sooner than I had expected!

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Whoops. Guess Friday’s edition had to… wait.

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That poster has been rolled up in a packing tube for longer than Kina has been alive so this is a major accomplishment. Also happy anniversary to me and Kina‘s mommy who are very very happy to be here together and with her. Seventeen years!!!

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I, too, am a stressed bunny whom you must pick up so gently, lest I skitter away, my paws tapping on the floor.

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Cow farts: crisis or distraction from the contemporary horror?

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From the mouths of babes.

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Thanks to Ya-Ya, who is “Yeh-Yeh” in our style guide, for covering during our staycation.

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The chill in the air tells you that the pumpkins are afoot.

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X marks the spot. Now you got the chillies. Something like that.

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Truly a fantastic brain.

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They’re tough.

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She is appealing the decision.

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Honestly not a bad time for having eaten half a pound of chicken in white sauce.

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HELLO FUTURE KINA!!! WE LOVE YOU!!!

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Trust me: We were all surprised.

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It’s the shoeless guy with the dirty dish at the coworking place, always.

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So earnest and so cringeworthily incompetent. Sayeth Kina: “It says it gets it but it totally doesn’t get it!”

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Not being there for this was like missing her first steps, except the baby is telling you about it and getting angry at you for being wistful.

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The actual most dangerous playset maneuver is jumping off the swings, but she’s not there yet. It’s for fifth graders.

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Come for the impressive drawing of Kina twirling, stay for my first kiss with Laurea ever depicted in these pages.

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I really love that she owns her tinyness and mightiness. Two great tastes that taste great together.

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I am willing to bet it will be a fond memory, just not for a while.

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I am still reckoning with what we heard last night. Trans people need your protection today more than ever. My sister Andrew stood tall in one of the oldest churches in New York and sang her heart out. Neither Kina nor I will ever forget it.

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I’ll keep standing by that gate as long as she will have me.

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Sign me up.

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That’s right, Kina. You never trust the AI overview.

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The last water balloons are always bittersweet.

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It felt like the last playground of her childhood, but maybe it was just dark.

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Her favorite bit by far was the Muppet Babies montage.

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Fifth grade might be a doozy, but fourth is fine for now.

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She makes the truffle market sound so simple.

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Now I’m trying to remember when I stopped having snack time in school. Feels wrong somehow.

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today is the only first day of fourth grade kina will ever have, and she is taking it seriously. it’s getting to the point where i can remember being her age a lot more easily, and that is weirding me out. FOURTH GRADE!!!

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That was quite a drive home, but at least she was listening on headphones. We survived!

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Intoned as if in the trailer of a Hallmark Channel movie: It was cold in the water but warm in our hearts. For Kina, the beach is home.

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Bloop! Don’t talk to me! Over!

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She needs to charge her battery on the rocks for thirty minutes after every chilly dip in the waves, but this year is better than the last two, in that she is at least not screaming for an hour when she gets out this year.

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How did she get from princess dresses to this?

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Otis is about the same age Kina was when she started this project with me. She knows a lot about preschool, but only the first four months of it. After that, it was all a blur.

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It’s cold, yes, but you get used to it. Warming up will be much worse.

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I’m not saying it’s fall, but we are in Maine and the sweatshirts are out and the locals are lighting bonfires.

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Kina has been jonesing for a substantial shortening of her hair since she noticed how many anime icons have chic little bobs. Laurea and I gave her a 30% chance of freaking out when she saw just how much hair she’d taken off, but we got lucky—she loves it.

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It is factually not fall, but I get where she is coming from.

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The friend group is shattered, in both senses of the world.

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p.s. And congratulations to all of you for reading the actual news of today’s paper on its official publish date. The journey was worth it.

The dinosaur carries one post it note at a time and moves very slowly and often gets stuck. Like me.

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You will see tomorrow that the break in razzing did not last long.

(I think this means we are pretty much caught up! Thanks for coming on this two-newsletters-per-day journey with us!)

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This was, to be clear, also parents’ first anime con, and it was a real doozy. Took ninety minutes sitting on a random bench outside Hudson Yards just to get my pulse back down.

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She is totally fine cleaning up other people’s messes… for a price.

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