Kid Dons Autumnal Layers

What is there to say here? Kina looks snazzy in a coat. She’s been moaning for months that she wants to wear “down-sleeve” dresses and pajamas instead of the arm-baring “up-sleeve” tops we’ve been dressing her in all summer. We can’t tell if it’s because she is more comfortable in down-sleeve dresses or just prefers the look of them, but she’s quite happy these last few days of sixty-degree weather to have her arms and legs covered as she heads out the door. The problem here is that she appears to have grown significantly, and things that we called dresses last year are shirts for the tall girl with whom we now reside. I know I say this a lot, but how did she get to be this big? The shoes-too-small headline from the other day is just one of several examples in which Kina has become a giant. Fortunately, we bought her a coat last year that was comically too big, and which now fits her like a glove. Again, I’m not interested in her staying the same size, but I seem to keep forgetting—despite approaching our fifth winter with this kid—that she outgrows seasonal clothes every year, and I’m starting to understand why my parents always bought me shoes that were a size too big.

Unexpected People Mess Up Entire House

I just want you all to know that I have been asking our management company for five years to replace my 1980s-era windows—which never closed correctly, are not properly sealed, and leak both air and precipitation. Yesterday morning, seemingly out of nowhere, they arrived with eight brand new windows. I skedaddled Kina out of the house for the day, while they tore the windows out of my walls and methodically replaced them. When she came back, eight hours later, the installers were carrying bent and torn aluminum and bags of trash out of the house, and Kina’s toys and animals were shoved in a pile all on one side of her room. Her takeaway, predictably, was that these men had rearranged her room for her, and she was thrilled at the novelty. She didn’t even notice the windows. To each her own.

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