It feels good to be trusted. It feels good to deserve that trust. It feels good to earn that trust. It feels good to catch her, to feel her back in the palms of my hands. It feels good to hear her giggle at the thrill of not actually hitting the floor. It feels good to know we have this.

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Honestly, as pledges go (and I’m generally not one for pledges), it’s a great one, and there’s nothing that inspires more confidence in the midst of really dark days than hearing a six-year-old recite this with vigor before she goes to bed at night. What can these children not accomplish?

Best!

Curious!

Don’t bust out the boogies unless it’s Thursday. That is sacred boogie time.

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I mean, it’s good to know that you get a solid seven years before you have to worry about whether or not you measure up. (She does.)

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She insists she doesn’t climb on the toilet paper dispenser to chat over the stalls, but I’m not entirely sure I believe her. Still, it sounds like there’s a lot going on in that bathroom—the great equalizer of second grade girls.

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Laurea and her mother have a hard time with goodbyes. They both put on a good face, but I know it’s hard for them—and so does Kina. She’s always at the ready when Lala pulls away, with a hug and a reminder that they’ll see each other soon, which is true, and it helps. The hug, especially.

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First of all, she no longer calls it “Zentals Park”, but she did make a joke about the fact that she used to call it “Zentals Park” yesterday, so the term is in play. Secondly, I was stunned to learn that Kina knows—apparently instinctively—how to row a boat, despite never having rowed a boat in her life. She is better at rowing than at least one other member of her immediate family! I will not say whom!

It was a beautiful day, there in Zentals Park, with her family and all the disco skaters.

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When either of us wins, we both win, and since there are only two players, it’s basically all just winning.

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The second is a record of how much fun Kina had hanging out with Lala while “parents hie off to Chelsea”, which we did. It was fun, really, for all parties. They had pancakes. We had adult conversation. Nice trade.

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The first of two short missives today—a sort of pairing. This first one is a record of Kina dealing with mild separation anxiety as we pack off for a single overnight in a hotel nearby. She’s used to this, but she wanted us to know how long a day is—which is, apparently, pretty long.

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The grandmother has arrived, and she has been met by a child who can now make a calm request for a bit of quiet together. They love each other very much.

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What are stars made of?

They are all like the sun. Hot gases and stuff. Fire.

Smaller?

Even I have to admit that my ANIK tag is extremely poor. Twenty-seven years in New York City and that’s the best I can do? Shameful.

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I have always liked math. My mother likes math, too, and was always my homework partner when it came to numbers. So it is that I have taken up the mantle and am now Kina’s math homework partner, calculating how many “10 cm rulers” it takes to approximate “Jamie’s” height. It’s fun to see how Kina’s mind works, and good practice for me to step back and stay quiet when she’s thinking. Eventually, she reasons through a problem, which is always very impressive—even if the math is simple. I’m excited to work through this year’s problems with her (math and otherwise), because it reminds me of what it feels like to learn: a little stretchy at the edges, and well-paired with some good silence. Thanks, mom.

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To be fair, I have been looking for a little Quality Time with Kina, who is trying on “what if we just don’t hang out with Daddy” for size. Reading with Mommy, school walk with Mommy, bathtime with Mommy; it adds up (for me and Mommy both). So yesterday, after lunch, when I had to go to the bathroom, Kina came along for first dibs—but was surprised to find that I wasn’t just there for a little chat and gossip. Maybe this is how bathrooms work? A respite for reconciliation? A demilitarized zone for working out our stuff? Restrooms: come for the pee, stay for the quality time.

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Thank you, climate emergency, for sparing us for the latter half of Saturday, so that Kina could hop onto the back of my bike and ride with us out to the West Side Fest (first one, I think?) to see a rapping planet Earth, some double-dutch jumprope, a fully-functional letterpress and screen-printing setup, and God’s Finest Face Painter. Toss in a little pasta and a carousel with no line, and you have the makings of Kina’s favorite weekend in recent memory. We watched the sun set over a playground on the Hudson River and had a nice ride home. The end.

I really love this Parade. Bold background, cut-out pizza cat, glitter glue, and random pepperoni everywhere. Enjoy your week.

I once wrote about a coffee shop that Kina refers to as “cheddar cheese and bacon”, because they sell a breakfast sandwich that I’d refer to as a bacon, egg, and cheese—but I can’t, because I really don’t accept cheddar cheese on a traditional bacon, egg, and cheese sandwich. It doesn’t melt properly, it congeals even more poorly after it sort of melts, and it just sort of tastes like acid and salt on a sandwich that, let’s face it, has plenty of salt.

Whenever I have attempted to introduce Kina to a proper bacon, egg, and cheese—which is to say (and I’m not accepting arguments at this time) a sandwich with not-too-overcooked bacon, one egg either fried medium-hard or scrambled (in a pinch), and a single slice of unctuous, gooey, supernaturally-yellow American cheese—my daughter has rebuffed both the sandwich and the father offering it. It is, best I can tell, the fault of the cheese. This is my greatest disappointment as a father.

I’m not entirely sure what cheddar cheese is for, because people who like cheese boards never seem to include a cheddar, and it tends to fail in most cooked applications. A soup, maybe? Some sort of scone? In powdered form, it makes for an outstanding mac and cheese—seen in our third headline today about gentle money. All I know is that cheddar cheese is not designed to melt and has no place on a bacon, egg, and cheese sandwich. Maybe it’s good on a cold ham and cheese sandwich; I don’t eat them, but it’s a logical fit.

I cannot, in any language known to me, convey sufficiently to you how completely over this rainy season I am. I just want to stop coughing and be dry, and for my family to stop coughing and be dry.

Out!

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I mean, who really knows?

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I can’t remember the first time I experienced déja vu, and I still couldn’t tell you why it happens, but when I saw the look on Kina’s face yesterday morning as she recalled me standing in the precise position I had been standing in, with the same stuffed unicorn pressed to the same burgundy shirt I had been wearing, I saw in her eyes a look of gentle shock and discovery that gave me an unusual view into how she understands the world. Don’t get me wrong—Kina still discovers a lot every day, but it’s been a while since she discovered her own mind in a way that she could put words to. It could, of course, be the case that there is another Kina in another universe with another dad holding another unicorn, and that this rediscovery is all part of a more complex set of coincidences. I guess that’s for me and Kina to figure out later.

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Have we talked about the peanut allergy? Let’s just say it: There’s a peanut allergy, and it’s gotten to the point that we can now safely question the severity of the allergy, which means lots of boring time spent hopefully not having allergic reactions to peanut powder while sitting at the allergist’s office. So far, so good. Bodies are weird. Allergists are great. We all get by.

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To be clear, she crossed the pool the short way several times and without assistance, making her one of the most accomplished athletes I have ever met. Shower her with praise.

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Nicky and Kina are both getting so much bigger and more moodily teenaged in spirit, but they remain just sweet little kids who are really into movies about rural witches and steampunk castles.

What else is there to say here? It’s just rainy. Sorry about the fart.

This morning was a good morning to have nothing much to do, other than dress up like a flight attendant and complain about the cool autumn breeze.

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Today’s edition is all sneaky vibes. Extremely esneeky.

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If it is Thursday, it must be Saturday.

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I really had Kina pegged as a bouncy ball chair girl, given her history as a bouncer, but this wouldn’t be the first time she surprised me. Neither of us, for the record, would be a boring chair kid.

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She really dodged a bullet there. Could have been eating cafeteria sushi for three years straight.

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When you’re six, there is nothing quite like walking randomly into Tompkins Square Park to find a troupe of amateur actors performing an antifascist musical about the subway. This is why we live here.

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Usually, when we visit Governor’s Island, as we did yesterday with Kina’s friend Runa, we rent a bike for Laurea (who does not own one), and I squire Kina about on the back of my bike—which is built to squire Kina around, after all. Yesterday, though, Kina was insistent that we rent a bike with training wheels so that she could ride next to Runa, who would also rent a bike with training wheels, and they would terrorize the island together.

I balked at first, having seen Kina ride a bicycle only three times in her life—to a rather underwhelming effect, which I know sounds mean, but really, she wasn’t going anywhere fast. But Kina persisted, and so a bike with training wheels was procured for her, and she pedaled off gamely in Runa’s wake.

This quickly evolved. By the time we were snarfing down hot dogs, Kina and Runa were doing long, looping laps of the car-free paths of Governor’s Island on their own—and quickly. By the midafternoon, Kina was riding fast enough that I could pedal at my relatively normal calm pace, as she dodged in front of and behind Runa and her older sister.

Today was not quite fully warm, but it was not at all cold, either, which she seemed to think was fine. Tolerably, mostly warm.

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Mary Kay over here.

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It doesn’t stop, Kina.

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To be fair, it was an excellent haircut.

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All Kina wants is to be able to say she knows somebody on the playground without her parents making a whole deal of it. Is that really so much to ask?

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I’m not trying to say that we talk a lot in this house, but it makes sense that Kina finds real joy in speech. The older she gets, the better she is at exploring the nuances of her feelings and experiences, which is gratifying to all of us. There are times, maybe, when it maybe feels better to her than it does to us, but I don’t take it for granted. It feels good, to me, for her to talk—on balance, given the alternative. I can wait my turn.

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The Daily Kina would like to remind you that Autumn does not technically begin for another week and change, and that you should continue with your summer protocols until the Autumn Equinox officially arrives. Do not—repeat, do not—purchase Halloween costumes, bust out scarves, drink pumpkin spice lattes, or perform any other customary cold season rituals in a rush to escape this unseasonal humidity and heat; the side effects of moving too quickly into Autumn could result in bored and sad children throughout New York City.

For the purposes of this mandate, “you” shall be construed to include deciduous trees. Keep those leaves high. We have months yet to grow weary and dry. Enjoy the moment.

I was just now trying to find old issues of this newsletter that talked about how conflicted I was about the idea of someday no longer writing The Daily Kina, and I couldn’t find anything—which either means that I’m really bad at search engine optimization or really bad about acknowledging this elephant in the room.

It’s possible, of course, that I’ve mentioned it here or there in the midst of talking about Kina’s weird relationship with time or in one of the many anniversary posts, but it’s more likely the case that I just haven’t mentioned it.

I may have mentioned here or there that I originally planned to do this for a hundred days—which is what I consider the high bar of success for a new hobby—and then planned to go until she started kindergarten, or maybe for a year, or until the vaccines came out, or, or, or, or, or…

It is apparently the case that you “cannot get in trouble” in Mr. Ortiz’s class, but we are following up to confirm these allegations.

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Off to the races with this tall person who claims to be my baby daughter.

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She explained to me at bedtime tonight that embarrassing is the same as annoying, and when I tried to point out the ways in which embarrassing somebody is different, she agreed that I was annoying.

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Smoosh.

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You all may feel that a little chill in the evening air signifies the end of summer. For these girls, it is when Futura gets back from Italy. Let the autumn commence.

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Our publisher would like to announce that, having finally tested Covid-negative after nine brutal asymptomatic days, she is declaring our three-person newsroom Covid-free and cleared for beat reporting once again. The masthead will not be taking questions at this time. Thank you for your continued subscription to the Daily Kina. Wear your masks.

It’s back! Parade is back! I bought Kina a box full of adhesive googly eyes for entertainment last week, and she’s put them to good use here on her suspiciously trippy mushroom. One for the ages!

Straight into the middle like a psychopath.

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This whole process of being The Sick Family again has been interesting. A lot is different this time around: We know how the virus works, we are fully-vaccinated, we came prepared with tests and food. Similar, of course, are the tedium, the patience, and the isolation.

Now that Laurea and I are negative, we’re able to go into stores and ride subways and see people (in principle, if not in practice). But Kina is still fully asymptomatic and positive, which means that the person to whom friendship means more than anybody else here cannot see her friends. She trades videos with children she knows, but she spends time with us—the only people guaranteed to have full immunity to the strain of Covid she’s waiting out.

In the onset phase, there was lots of iPad time—the kind of iPad time that would summon the wrath of countless parent bloggers, a fearsome amount of iPad time. In those first couple of days, it seems that Kina watched, in her loft bed, the entirety of a Rapunzel show I did not even know existed.

Gotta love that pockets still inspire this sort of wonder.

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I don’t remember getting this wound up about class assignments as a kid, but the tree names probably help a lot with the drama.

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Over the last few weeks, I have spent literal hours watching Korean ASMR baking videos and memorizing every possible cake baking and decorating technique. The cake I ended up making is a testament to how little you can actually learn from YouTube. Tasted good, though.

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Come for the parental slander, stay for the detailed anonymized list of actual crushes.

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