I did not expect, after arriving on this small island, having transferred through a slightly larger island by boat for an hour and a half, to find an even smaller resort that would, for some reason, have a well-appointed theater that might host a 90-minute cabaret spectacular with epic costume changes and elaborate choreography—performed by a local dance troupe whose skills would eclipse that of any other municipality with a population of fewer than 30,000 people. Kina was absolutely rapt—a Christmas miracle.

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It’s a long way to here, but we made it.

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The sweetest and most tragic thing about Kina crying in her bed last night at 8 pm was that she really understood what had happened to her, and she knew that she had crossed a line she could not uncross. Sometimes you just consume a little too much day, and you regret it just a little bit—wonderful as it may have been.

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Long time readers will not be shocked by this statistic.

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Going for two rain-themed headlines in as many days here. After she asked this question, I went for a run and was constantly checking for palm trees so as to protect my noggin from a torrential downpour of coconuts.

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The pool is always the point on these vacations, and we were getting wet one way or the other.

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When I first visited the Philippines, Laurea’s mom picked us up at the airport to take us to the hotel—and then promptly took us to her childhood home instead. There, while slightly dazed, I sat at the family’s enormous round dining table, slightly worn, with its inset paneling and built-in lazy susan, and I ate the best mangoes of my entire life from the tree in front of the house.

Some time ago, years after Laurea’s grandfather died, the family rented out the house, and her Aunt Charie took that table—which Laurea’s grandfather had gotten for the house decades prior, when Charie was still small—to her farm in Batangas. It is in her kitchen now, with its lazy susan and the chairs I sat in eating mangoes in 2009, ready for family.

Yesterday (or the day before, here, because that’s how time zones work), Kina took a seat at that table and ate spaghetti and mangoes. One after another, she devoted her fruit, spinning the lazy susan until the serving platter came her way. The plate she ate from is from the same collection of plates that Laurea ate from when she was little.

Our lady of the castle of the clouds, in the Tropic of Cancer, on the planet called Earth, under the evaporative eye of the sun.

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I have managed to do one of these every day since 2020, and I very nearly got foiled by time zones. As penance, here is the December 16th issue and a fancy moth.

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Turns out markers behave funny at high elevations, therefore the blotches. Will be posting from the verdant jungles of the Philippines for the next few days, now that Kina has survived her first direct flight to Manila (with grace and good humor).

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Hello from JFK, where we await our flight to the other side of the world. Laurea is eating a cup noodle, a TV playing CNN is blaring over my head, and Kina is watching a movie on her iPad. It is 11:20 at night. She is unfathomably psyched.

Next edition from the sky.

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Kina brings the holiday hits.

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Someday, she really won’t let me hold her hand anymore when we cross the street, and this is the issue of The Daily Kina I will point to in recognition of that moment.

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Today is the fourth birthday installment of The Daily Kina, and the seventh birthday installment of Kina. I was looking at pictures today of Kina from her birthday in 2020, when she was still so small and we were still so isolated. Among the pictures is a video of her doing her daily Zoom with her pre-Kindergarten classmates. She shows them her balloons and you can hear the voices of other children, tinny over the laptop speaker, talking about how shiny the balloons are. Her teacher asks everybody who is already four to put up four fingers. Kina looks calmly at the screen, because she is big now.

There was a lot of Zoom when Kina was four. Her birthday party, like everybody else’s, was conducted by video—balloons in the background, a kid’s singer appearing from in front of the fireplace in her house, cake with a candle, impatient children on their parents’ laps, not knowing any better because so few of them could remember any birthday at all that wasn’t conducted over Zoom.

It was a special birthday, because it felt like a moment of joy in the midst of a lonely year. We would celebrate Christmas alone that year—just the three of us, like we were the last people on earth. Kina’s birthday in 2020 felt like two adults welcoming a junior colleague into a secret society, a dose of adulthood and a slice of cake.

As the opening credits of The Boy and the Heron began, we realized we had made a huge mistake. Rather than purchasing tickets to the Christian-Bale-dubbed English language version of Hiyao Miyazaki’s most recent (and ostensibly final) film, we had inadvertently gotten ourselves seats at the Japanese language, subtitled version of the film.

In any context that did not involve a young child, I might have actually preferred this, but Kina is a new (if devoted) reader, and I got ready to pack up my things as I explained to Kina that she would need to read subtitles to understand the film.

Surprisingly, she was all in.

Lots of stuffing and laziness in this Saturday edition. Thank you, as always, Hannah, for everything.

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p.s. the stuffing is very good

You know how it is sometimes. Kina’s just looking out for me.

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A BFF for all situations.

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When I tell you that this is as excited as she gets about anything at all, you will understand how much she loves wearing shorts.

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The wait is nearly unbearable.

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Drop-off party for sixteen children, check. Elaborate goody bag ritual, check. Party horn shortage disaster averted, check. Vegan pizza, check. One week until seventh birthday. Start your engines.

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She called me out on not circling all the O’s and the dots on the lowercase I’s, but the joke’s on her, because there are no lowercase letters in The Daily Kina. Also, given that I spent all yesterday hauling her around the city looking for goody bag goods, she’s lucky there’s an edition today at all. This big girl has high standards and no shortage of gall.

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This girl loves pasta so much that she’d be willing to donate her finest examples of it to the church.

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At the end of the day, ancient weekday namers all agree: name the last day of the 21st century work week after the goddess.

Venus, Frigg, Diēs Veneris, Friday.

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Would you rather?

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Technically, it was “one whale, bending itself”, but I didn’t have space for that. Also, I should be clear that this apartment cannot hold one hundred dogs, let alone multiple elephants and the aforementioned whale. Would that it could.

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Kina has now agreed to set the table, make her bed, put away her own clothes, and occasionally sweep. Our team investigates how those promises are—or are not—fulfilled in the weeks ahead.

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‘Tis, as they say, the season.

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Kina long ago decided that “roasting” somebody should instead be “frying” them. We are home after a long week of frying. The beds are comfy but the family was fun.

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Sticks and stones can break my bones but moss and soil distract them.

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Here you see the giant single hopscotch square that Kina has drawn for her Yeh-yeh, after noting (and then desperately backpedaling out of having noted) his insufficient flexibility for the task at hand.

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To the hunt! Hrrrrrrrngk!

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The kids are all right. We have that much, and I do not take it for granted.

For what it’s worth, that taped-on bit at the bottom is where my marker exploded. No starting over! The tape will cure all errors!

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So do we all.

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To be honest, if she thinks I’m weird on weekends, it’s only because she doesn’t see me in the middle of the day during the week, when I am weird to my coworkers instead of to her.

A very glittery bejeweled Parade for you all today. She picked up a little baggie of star glitter the other week, and I’ve been trying to control its release—today was its day, and now every time I pass our dining table today, I’ve had to pick up seven pieces of the shiny detritus. Was it worth it??

Every eye is a mirror when it’s looking right at you.

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I, too, resent having to wear pants, but we all have our cross to bear.

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It was a real toss-up today between the gigglefish and the butt prison as lead headline. Editing this paper is a tough job.

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I have no idea why the school serves two different sorts of cafeteria pizza. Based on the pictures I’ve seen, even the “good pizza” is no good, but if you ask Kina, the “bad pizza” is so unfathomably bad that an audible groan rings out through the cafeteria when it is served. So, all relative.

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Not as many pumpkins, but a really short line.

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Zoltar thinks you may need to let go of that person, thing, or situation that isn’t serving you. He also thinks your lucky numbers are 67, 42, 59, and 12.

I wish I were big.

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Kina keeps asking if wasps are good or bad, and why jellyfish exist, and if mosquitos serve any purpose at all, and I find it hard to explain to her that defining the purpose or value of another living thing relative to our own human existence is wildly insufficient, and so I just try to talk about what it would mean if all these things went away, and why there are so many jellyfish, and maybe that the mosquito’s best purpose is keeping humans out of the forests and swamps. What purpose do we serve, after all?

Hard to tell, some days.

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Some parents spell out their secrets to hide them from their kids; we text.

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Have fun at work today

I hope you like your treat and I love you so much and I hope that your work will be cool not hot make sure you will go on the swing tell me what we are going to eat for dinner. And tell me how bar bar class went with your sore arm I love you so much and have fun at work today I love you very much!

Spaghetti, of course, gets a ten.

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Wait until she learns about the Dewey Decimal System.

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On any given day, we pass a couple thousand total strangers, mixed in with probably a hundred people we know and either do or don’t notice. Of the remaining nineteen hundred total strangers, all of whom are slightly lost in this city, some live here full time and some flew here for the day. Except for the fact that they wear their backpacks on the front, there’s no point in wasting time identifying a tourist. Just point everybody in the right direction and get on with your day, Kina.

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I do remember reading lots of books about parenting before Kina was born, and then of course I was fielding lots of advice, and I was thinking about all the things my parents did to raise me that I never noticed (and in many cases could never remember). I even took a job to build a parenting product (RIP NYT Parenting), partly because I figured I’d be around a lot of other people who knew what they were doing, and I could copy them.

But in the end, everything was Kina, and all I knew was Kina, and the only teacher who mattered was Kina.

I think that’s just how it goes. The most difficult job in the world, and there’s no reliable coursework. You just wing it, and it tends to work. Thanks, kid.

To be clear, she is quoting me, her wrinkly and dusty father.

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There’s always a good thing to wonder as you’re drifting off to sleep and your daddy comes home from work.

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