3-Year-Old Amused By Video Of 2-Year-Old

On long days, I like to take Kina aside to watch videos from The Before Times: indoor play spaces, school drop-offs, grandparent visits, birthday parties. It’s kind of amazing how we’ve managed to hold it together without any of those things—or, I suppose, how we are actively managing to hold it together—but what’s even more astonishing is how much this child has grown in the last year. In videos from last May, she looks as tiny as a sprite (I sometimes wonder how to proportion triangular Kina in the illustrations here—is she more equilateral or isosceles?) and has the voice and vocabulary of a baby becoming a kid. Yesterday, Kina and I watched one video over and over. In it, we are at the dining room table. She blows maniacally on a bowl of buttered tortellini, turns to me and asks “iss too hot?”; I tell her to give it a try, and as she takes a tentative bite, she mutters “good temp-a-chur”. This is a child who, in a few months, would walk into a classroom for the first time—a classroom in which she wouldn’t even finish the year, but would nonetheless become a real kid-like human being. Kina watched and rewatched that video because she thought her voice was hilarious, but I rewatched it because it feels like a hundred years ago, and I can’t for the life of me figure out how so much time has passed, how she’s blossomed so much in a situation that feels so desperately barren. Keeping these newspapers as a diary is a reminder of what that change has looked like over the last four months, but these videos feel like a missive from a distant continent. This is what life is like there? How can I get back to that? If this is how toddlers change as they make the journey, what has happened to us?

Lots of work went into this morning’s Parade, with Laurea painting all the things that have been making us happy lately: candles, cantaloupe, ice cream, fresh juices, long drives. Kina was prolific with the watercolors, producing four of her own paintings. She selected the one pasted at the center of all our little pleasures and topped off the cover with a well-selected Pizza Party! sticker.

Hope you all have an invigorating or peaceful Labor Day—whichever feels right to you this year. Kina will continue her grand tour of playgrounds and probably demand dessert, which we will likely give to her. A special treat!

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