Daddy recalls early pandemic sandwich walks with 4-year-old Kina
Cheddar Cheese and Bacon makes its first showing in The Daily Kina in a secondary headline on August 13 of 2020, in the height of outdoor dining, when Kina discovered the wonders of a good bacon, egg, and cheese. Then, about a year later, we had a celebratory visit to Cheddar Cheese and Bacon. We haven’t documented a morning visit to the mothership since then, and so it is with great pleasure thatKina and I walked to the local coffee shop for a sandwich on a day off from school, splitting it straight down the middle and talking about dogs. I missed it, really.
First client in the door on Sunday morning gets the onyx studs
I don’t know that I’ve felt the passage of time so keenly as I did when I watched Kina’s face transition between cusp-of-weeping anxiety and confident adulthood as she got holes punched in her earlobes.
I can’t say it any other way than that she is this much closer to growing up.
Publisher visits archives of The Daily Kina, unearths forgotten mysteries
For those of you who have been receiving your daily (sometimes) copy of this publication for more than four years, you may recall a storyline about a mysterious toy called “Oakwul” that consumed a few weeks of newspapers in the midst of the pandemic lockdown.
Last night, I pulled out one of seven archival storage boxes containing every edition of The Daily Kina and walked Kina through a few at random. Watching her read about herself at the tender age of three, from a time she barely recalls, was deeply satisfying for me.
I’ve always said that this newspaper is for Kina more than it is for anybody else, and now that I can give it to her in little chunks, it feels like I’ve kept a promise.
Ski Week is over and the teachers are healthy again; she brings home a poster with all the nice things classmates think about her cat drawings
It’s a bit late for Valentine’s Day, but the teachers got the flu (I thought they’d get off scot-free, but nope) and then there is a random week of vacation that probably should happen in December but doesn’t, and so here come the valentines.
It’s a nonsense holiday, but the way kids do it is kind of nice. People like her drawings and how she picks people up. It’s a vibe.
She refuses to tell me anything about it, but Ken says she had fun.
It’s really hard to paint a well-lit finale from a Broadway show with watercolors when you’ve never seen the show and your kid won’t tell you anything about it.
Client moves to the Big Girl Chair for the first time; we celebrate with hair decoration
I think that a publisher who gets out of the taxicab chair and sits in the Big Girl Chair after six years of haircuts deserves a little strand of fairy hair or two. Just a little older. Just a little.
Baking marathon culminates in publisher eating real cake
We have now made it to Valentine’s Day, just five days late (or four, if we go by the issue date). The cake was delicious, and we ate it for the next two days.
It is a game she just invented when she looked at the donut box
If you think that Kina making up a math game because she saw the squares of the fibonacci sequence on a donut box doesn’t make me irrationally proud, you are sorely mistaken.
Kina gives him a choice—put it in the paper or she will tell her friends
Kina was very serious about the choice I faced, and so now you get to read about my little road rage incident from last week, which I promised very seriously never to repeat. So now you know, too. I’m getting better at this.
dad
p.s. I expect to be caught up to the current edition in just a few more days here. Hang in there.
You give them red envelopes, they give you a year of good fortune and you can pet them
When I wrote this, it was still technically the Lunar New Year, and I am particularly proud of both my annual New Year lion and my traditional Chinese lettering here. This is quickly becoming my favorite edition of every year.
Child who has visited Manila twice accurately clocks the national vibe
It says a lot about the Philippines that our 8-year-old daughter understands how polarizing a place it can be. The fact that she chose “magnificent” as a verb, though, tells you where she stands.
dad
p.s. A reminder that I am slowly working through a backlog here, so it is by design that you are getting this edition nine days late. We’ll get there. Patience.
Sure, it’s $10 for 12 minutes, but the defensive driving skills are worth it
Every time we go to Target, we end up stopping by this weird permanent light-up kid motorcycle test-drive track that anchors the end of the 6th floor of the Skyview Mall in Flushing. The same young goth is always working and is so incredibly over it. Kina, however, is overjoyed, every time.
Publisher has no love for sports, but she loves an excuse to break dress code
And just like that, we’re back to Kina dressing however she wants. In this case, though, it’s because every other kid in the school was wearing sports jerseys, and Kina doesn’t know enough about any sport to have a point of view about fandom. So, a nice black top.
Nonconformist concedes after several notes from administration
I cannot recall the last time she complied fully with the school dress code.
(Programming note: I’m gonna send two a day until we catch up. Think of it as a march through history. I’m actually contemplating ditching my Instagram entirely, which would make this the canonical Daily Kina, so I would not expect these long gaps to recur. Thank you, as always, for your subscription.)
They enjoy Chinese New Year festivities and marvel at tasty food
Hannah has lived in New York for a very long time, which made her first visit to Manhattan Chinatown with Kina on the Lunar New Year all the more special.
Sorry for the long delay. Kina infected our entire house with the worst flu of our entire lives. I’ll just give you the whole series at once, so as not to overwhelm your pity generators. Thank you for your subscription and your patience.
The Cooties Are Upon Us
Inevitably, the fever of the month visits its wrath upon our beloved publisher’s immune system
It started small. At this point we figured this would be a 24-hour affair. How wrong we would be!
Gas-obsessed friends take stock of recent belch history
There is a whole oral history that Kina and Amelia have—that each of them can recite—of all the burps they have shared in their friendship, but I have never successfully transcribed it. I promise to do so whenever I can.
Kid makes wish for new year, asks for eternity spent with parents
This is the first time Kina has really given voice to the wish and worry about how finite our time together might be—both in our home and in our existence. It plucked a string in me that I haven’t let go of since she said this. I also want an infinity life with her—and with Laurea—and it’s making me treat this moment that we do have more tenderly.
Confident publisher appreciates her own vibe, is unapologetically intense
I sort of forgot to write specifically about our visit to the Noguchi Museum, and so I kind of made the whole issue about it. Look how big she is! Look at that energy!
