Kid Bends Entire House of Children To Her Will

I have watched my friend Genevieve’s kids grow up, each from a mewling babe to—for the the first of them—adulthood. They are great kids (even the new adult) and Kina adores them. But as with all of the objects of Kina’s affection, she ultimately put them to hard labor yesterday, when we visited their house for the first time in two years, dragging the whole family through their own house to find stuffies, pet cats, distract dogs, push her on the swing, and inflate balloons. If you’ve ever wanted to see an eleven year old boy trail a kindergartner like a personal assistant, I suggest you spend a little time with Kina. It appeared to be fun to all parties involved, which comes as no surprise, as Kina is a barrel of laughs. It can be very easy to spend all day with a kid who finds you endlessly fascinating and useful. A few days in a row might drain you, but teenagers—like four year olds—have a lot of emotional energy, and they’re seemingly content to be bossed around, as long as the boss is half their height and chuckles like a maniac at every joke you tell.

Today’s Parade is potty-themed, because Kina (as noted in today’s paper) demanded a second watching of her new favorite video—a brief history of sanitation systems—and can’t get potties out of her head. As today’s top headline might suggest, Kina did very little of the actual drawing work here, but all of the art direction. Laurea picked up the slack, while Kina contributed the green hand towels.

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