“Do you want to touch it?”

“No.”

dad

I feel like we need to recondition Kina‘a expectations about business trips.

dad

I think she’s just telling me that while she’s capable of not eating candy, she’s unwilling to not eat candy. And we all have our boundaries.

dad

Wherever you filed the edition on empathy, you can probably file this, too. It’s important to remember that everybody is different, and that not everybody likes the same things you do, in quite the same way—whether flavors of ice cream, colors of nail polish, or whether or not they like chocolate.

Also, the story on the last headline today is that I was cleaning up in the kitchen while Kina was going to the bathroom last night, and after a few minutes of silence, she called out through the door, “You know, Daddy, someday you’ll be famous,” which was very nice of her to say but also strangely premonitory in tone. At least it’ll be for this, according to the kiddo. Monkey’s paw, and all that.

dad

I’m still exhausted from all the driving (and thank you, Ken, for sharing the load), but let me tell you—it is a wildly different thing to drive around with another adult in the passenger seat, instead of having them posted up behind you on Kina snack duty. As somebody who literally bought a car with the idea that his partner would be spending most of her time in the back seat with Kina, this is a novel and exciting development. Did it cost us two Kinder Eggs and seven hours of iPad time? Yes. Was it worth it? Yes.

I know I keep saying such and such this week’s Parade is my favorite yet, but this week’s parade is my favorite yet. Kina asked me to sketch a gem, and the rest was all her art direction: “only makeup colors, and mostly pink”. I think it turned out beautifully. It glitters.

I am the smooth dad.

dad

I was flat on my back after dinner, but this kid was running around like a maniac, lost between lunch and dinner.

dad

Staying in other houses is always tricky at bedtime, and there are some trips when I will wake up in the middle of the night and find myself alone in bed, with Laurea fast asleep in Kina’s borrowed bedroom. This is the only way either of us has any insight into Kina’s waking dynamic, which is aggressively forward-looking, as it turns out.

dad

Our apologies regarding the oxygen. We hope the non-stop iPad time helped with your suffering as we navigated bumper to bumper traffic through four states.

dad

I can’t believe she published before I did.

dad

In the last week, Kina’s favorite new sentence construction has been, “How would you feel if I [did what you are currently doing?]”. She always says this with an air of patient superiority, as if she’s been waiting to teach me a lesson about my behavior for years—which, in some cases, is probably true. The suggestion of empathy as a corrective tool is novel, but it’s hard sometimes to imagine what it must be like to be roughly six years old.

It is clearly overwhelming sometimes, and focus and respect are hard to come by. People are interrupting you constantly and not helping you in the ways that you expect (or need) to be helped. Weekends end too soon, and tasks leak into the joyful spaces that you’ve set aside for yourself. The fear and anxiety of the people around you can be hard to manage, and this hardly seems like something they, as adults, should be putting on you, but they’ve come to depend on you for comfort and approval—which is strange, since you are a child. You desperately want to be getting better and growing up, but it all goes so slowly. Nobody orders the right potatoes.

I guess I’d never thought of it that way before.

We took Kina to my Uncle Chris’ funeral yesterday, figuring she was old enough to reason with what was going on, and assuming that a kid her age both could and should be able to see others grieve.

Kina had met Chris only one time that she could remember—at my cousin Matt’s wedding, after Chris had already grown relatively frail. Still, I was pleased to see how entertained he was by Kina, both of them funny and sharp; they were good for each other, and they got along swimmingly.

I had assumed the service—in a Brooklyn church that Chris and my Aunt Mary have attended for the last several years—would be closed-casket, but it wasn’t, and so Kina and I found ourselves a few rows from Uncle Chris, and she struggled occasionally to get on her tiptoes so she could see his face, to no avail.

First field trip proves grand success. Erstwhile abstract artist vindicated, arranges show of early Parade issues to capitalize on newfound interest in squiggles.

dad

THE DAY HAS FINALLY COME.

dad

There is some serious The Publisher’s Mother energy in how Kina is rallying all the girls in first grade to confront one boy who made one girl cry and said sorry but not exactly what he was sorry for.

I’m proud of her.

dad

First, it became important to leave the kitchen light on—not just gently, but at full blast, with her bedroom door open.

Then we dimmed the lights in the living room overnight and accidentally left the smart bulb in our entryway at a setting that looked vaguely lavender, which freaked her out.

Then we left the lights bright in the living room, which she also hated.

The box says “6 ICE CREAM SANDWICHES”.

Hannah and Kina each ate one (1) ice cream sandwich, as a treat, on Friday evening.

Laurea offered Kina one (1) ice cream sandwich yesterday evening.

SOMEHOW SHE ALWAYS WINS

DAD

Kina has Knuffle Bunny home from school for the long weekend, and the powers that be at school have asked for thorough documentation. Kina’s working on her own notebook of K.B.’s time in the sun this weekend, but I printed out extra pictures of our day out yesterday gathering leaves and running around a maze and doing gymnastics and visiting our local dry cleaner, so that I could put together this rare photographic edition for all of you. The picture of Kina and K.B. sitting on the boob lady beanbag is not going in the first grade notebook; that’s exclusive.

I wasn’t sure what to make of today’s Parade as it was coming together, but it’s got a real cubist paste unicorn thing going on, now that I see it in the light of day. She’s really into drawing braids these days. And unicorns. Always unicorns.

Kina has been making me watch clips of Supernanny—a reality show trafficking in relatively real-talk notions of parental discipline, doled out by the eponymous super nanny, with whom Kina is straight-up fascinated.

To her detriment, as it seems—as I, Kina’s Daddy, have begun to internalize Jo Frost’s advice and set productive boundaries for Kina and myself, all of which leads to somewhat less candy and television.

dad

To be very clear, the tattoo artist was Kina, and the ink is water soluble. She did press really hard, though, so it felt honest.

dad

I just want to say, as somebody who draws every morning, that this song is a brilliant recipe for a drawing of a pig. Thank you to Ms. Hart, from whom I picked up Knuffle Bunny after school today—and who apparently learned this song in grad school—for teaching it to my newly-avid pig portraitist.

[sung to the tune of “one little, two little, three little fingers”]

Little circle, little circle, biiiiig circle [draw pig’s nose]
Little circle, little circle, biiiiig circle [draw rest of pig’s face]
Triangle, triangle, biiiiig circle [draw pig’s ears and giant body]
W! W! [draw pig’s feet]
e-e-e! [squiggle pig’s tail]

Apparently you have to give Knuffle Bunny a bath before he goes back to school, which, let’s face it, is probably universally good advice, bunny or not.

dad

This is the second election cycle of The Daily Kina, and I wish it were significantly less consequential than the last election edition, but it is not, and here we are. Because all headlines in this newspaper are in all caps, the reader is often left to establish whether or not any given headline is an urgent headline, but you can turn to the subject line of evening newsletter to learn the truth and learn that today, in fact, is urgent.

If you receive this newsletter and the polls are still open and you have not, in fact, voted—

PLEASE VOTE.

I just think she doesn’t understand why running down Bedford and sweating is worth the investment.

dad

I have been to many art openings in studio buildings in my day, and I can confidently assert that there is not much difference between an opening party with no children at 11pm and an opening party with mostly children at 3:45pm. Damage is almost assured.

Today’s Parade is almost shockingly new in style. Pastels were squooshed. It is gorgeous.

I have told the story of our meet-cute before, a decade ago, in celebration of our tenth year together. The relevant bit here is that I remember thinking how firm Laurea’s handshake was, and that we ended up having Kina, who now plays out that moment whenever she thinks of it. Wild.

Firm handshake Laurea circa 2002 would be absolutely appalled.

dad

The truth is, I never told her there were no bedbugs in New York. She can arrive at that conclusion on her own.

dad

p.s. On further investigation, I learned that “Little Baby Klepto” is a line from Centaurworld—one of our shared favorite shows. She is, to the best of my knowledge, not an actual infant kleptomaniac.

I guess what happened—and the narrative here is unclear—is that yesterday, in the schoolyard, there were parents of an unknown Kina who were recognized by some teacher or another. Somehow, this (our) Kina became aware of that teacher having recognized the parents of the other Kina—who is, apparently, in second grade at the very same school she currently attends. It is only possible that our Kina would know this because the aforementioned teacher had told her directly that the other Kina was in second grade, that being a fact which no other human being (the other Kina’s parents included) could plausibly have disclosed. This defies all probability, because Kina’s name is so vanishingly rare—a feature that her mother more or less demanded when we were thinking of names1—that she appears to share it only with the singer Kina Grannis (after whom we did not name Kina) and a nineteenth-century Bulgarian suffragist (after whom we sort of did2). The likelihood that there would be another Kina in the grade immediately above her, and that nobody had thought in three years to mention how strange it was that there were two Kinas in adjacent class years is hilariously distant3, yet tantalizing.

I do not intend to ask whether or not there is actually a second grader named Kina, because I like the idea that there is exactly one Kina enrolled each year at the school around the corner, living just out of view and being an absolute charmer in ways that everybody keeps as their own precious secret.

dad

Sorry bro.

dad

1. The newsroom has seen a lot of incoming questions from our private morning edition regarding our assertion that Kina ate fourteen actual lollipops. That number is an estimate, and we now expect the final count to come in far short of that—but it is still a ton.

2. The peanut butter cups were tasty. Kina is safe. A win-win situation, really.

dad

If only the world knew that every day in Kina’s life is Halloween.

dad

There are some times of day in which it still feels like Kina is a baby. Those times, which do not include the many hours of scolding and sassy gossip we exchange with her, the bits where she eats great quantities of food at dinner, or the walks to school, are growing fewer and farther between. One of the last remaining such rituals is bathtime.

We first bathed Kina about a week after coming back from the hospital, even though she still had the floral baby smell thing going for her. She was a temperamental infant, which had us assuming the worst about this first bath. We watched four YouTube videos about bathing infants, filled a basin with warm water, and braced ourselves.

When do they teach you in school that your heart is located squarely on the left side of your chest? Why do I have no heartbeat?

dad

Really, though, Mommy should pace herself.

dad

Sorry so late. It all washes out in time.

dad

“Give me a task,” she says. Who are we to refuse?

dad

In almost six years, we have not needed an alarm clock. Until today. Just made it to school, and alarm set for tomorrow.

dad

On a rainy day, there is little better to do in New York than go to the Metropolitan Museum of Art and wander around aimlessly. This, of course, is easier done when you are alone (highly recommended) or in a party made up entirely of adults. It is a considerably greater toss-up when you have a child in tow.

We have attempted the rainy-day Met visit in the past—twice, at least, and before the advent of masking and lockdowns. It did not go well. There is little to recommend in the Met for a child who can barely express herself in full sentences and who can find as much joy in a cardboard box as she can in carved marble. There was crying.

Yesterday, as I was doing nothing more than literally standing around at an outdoor street fair / fundraiser for a local elementary school, being brushed about by children running to or from a bouncy castle and screaming at each other, I reflected on how much less stressful it had been to be in the actual emergency room, missing two teeth and bleeding from my face, than it was to be in the midst of five hundred parents and their children in a line for face painting.

A retreat to the adjacent playground with Kina and her friend Runa was, by comparison, a visit to the spa. There, at least, I could sit while Kina and Runa ran around endlessly, pretending to leave the parents in the corner of the playground as they sought out “some Rosé”. The actual parents had no rosé, but at least they had a seat and six square feet of personal space.

I don’t remember what it was like to be almost six and in a crowd. I wish I could at least recall what it was like to have as much energy as Kina has. When I think about it really hard, I can feel my legs just moving, limited only by the coordination of my muscles, unbothered by the hard ground. Notably, I do not recall being tired at that age.

Daddy, in turn, rejects the notion that his face is “very scratchy” and suggests that maybe Kina’s cheeks are too soft and sensitive.

dad

I know this is funny, but if you haven’t seen her pull on an actual imaginary rope, you don’t know just how tragically gifted our young mime really is.

dad

Trust me—I never pass up an opportunity to snuggle with my stuffie child when the air outside is crisp and the fuzzy sweatshirt is so cozy.

dad

Maybe someday she’ll change her mind about the moon and the virtues of lunar solitude, but for my part, I will still miss her enough for both of us.

dad

Kina just can’t shake her love for her kindergarten teacher, whom she hugs daily in the lunchroom and dreams of every night.

dad

I don’t want to make our sound like Kina spent the entire walkathon browsing through used dresses to find a pristine Belle costume complete with built in petticoat, but I also don’t want to make it sound like she did much walking—or even scooting. She earned her donors’ money; that’s all I will say here.

dad

Sometimes, it’s very calming to just take a tiny pumpkin in your hands and feel what it’s like to hold one. These are things our children know.

It’s not like Kina is an easygoing boss on most days, but on Parade days, she’s a real tyrant. I cannot tell you how many pieces of construction paper (Blick’s Premium is the best, if you’re ever in the market for it) we went through in service of making this rainbow. Let’s just say that I had a very efficient idea, and that our art director rejected the approach out of hand. Kina ran us ragged, but the result is inarguably worth the pain.

Today, after Laurea and Kina headed off to gymnastics, I went back to trim the binding perforations off of some early The Daily Kina editions (so I can pack more in the boxes, and also because it was lazy of me ever not to have trimmed them, so I pay my trimming taxes during gymnastics now).

One of the headlines I found is among my favorites of all time: “If We Make Steak the Smoke Will Set Off the Smoke Detector and It Will Go Out and Fill Up the Neighborhood and We’re Gonna Get In Trouble and We Will Have To Move Somewhere Else Where There’s No Steak”. It is from November 14, 2020, and Kina was still three years old.

I remember the car seat manual, in November of 2020, saying that the seat should be used until the child is both over forty inches tall and forty pounds in weight, which is how I know that Kina was both smaller and lighter than that at the time I wrote this edition. She was too heavy to carry for blocks at a time, but I routinely put her up on my shoulders and paraded her all over the city without giving it a single thought.

Listen, all I know is this: Lala claims that Kina threw a tantrum when it was suggested that they would eat lunch at St. Anselm, compelling them instead to eat at Gertie, where all were satisfied by the matzoh ball soup. This morning, though, when questioned about that narrative, Kina looked quizzical and responded, “No, we went to St. Anselm and all the cookers were having lunch and Lala tried to open the door and a man in the ground under the metal things said, ‘Lady, they’re eating’ and so we went to Gertie instead.”

Where does the truth of the matter lie? Tune in next week. I’m jetlagged.

dad

Mommy, as always, a pleasant surprise.

dad