Better early than otherwise, say I.

And a quick reminder for all of you about why we took this little trip in the first place. Fourteen years married and twenty years together. I promised her we’d laugh and eat, and here we are, still at it. Love you forever, Laurea.

Apparently she sells balloons now.

Highly recommend the furrynicular and its attendant amusements.

Gifts, ice cream, Tagalog, benedictions… What treasures didn’t Sunday hold?

I’m not exactly sure who contributed what to this Parade. Could be all Kina, might be her grandmother, possibly her great aunt? All I know is that this is the first Pawrade in Parade history.

It is showtime, according to our visiting editor. Mom and Dad are chilling with some pintxos in Spain as it happens. A brief view of that:

All’s well. There is a bidet.

The adults in our newsroom are boarding a plane to another country, while the publisher spends a few days of quality time with her Lala. Expect some chaos for a while, and maybe a few pulled feet.

dad

Kina has entered Mommy’s sock size spectrum and it is now basically impossible to know who wears anything in this house.

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“The Earth is actually the boss.”

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There is a documentary that you can watch on YouTube about Elizabeth Streb, the founding choreographer of the eponymous dance company that hosts Kina’s little chaos class. The kids’ class is a lot tamer than what you see in the film, to be fair. Like the children, the professional dancers throw themselves at mats and leap from towers. It is thrilling. Unlike the children, the adults court serious injury in service of their art. The kids just slide into each other at the bottoms of ramps.

Kina started going to Streb, whose studio is in our neighborhood, when she was two or three—the smallest kid in the smallest class. Just as she got going with it, the city shut down, and Streb with it. Though the dancers have been back for a while, it’s only very recently that they reopened for the kiddos. The fact that they are still around after that long break is a testament to their staying power (and no doubt some intense fundraising and real estate negotiation).

Now Kina is with the bigger kids, but still the smaller of the bigger kids. They still throw themselves off things, but I assume the things are taller now. When we asked her if she was one of the big kids, she replied, “No. There are bigger kids, and they are tweens, and the biggest kids are teens, and they swing on big monkey bars and wear belts that they take off when they fall on the bouncy castle but do not take them home.”

I have been staring at the picture all day and I still can’t find our house. The panorama is a marvel, but it requires patience, which our publisher is frequently lacking. So it goes.

dad

Nicky was here yesterday, building a mansion from magnatiles and installing a laundry room when Kina most needed him to inspect their fort in her bedroom. As they worked on their respective domiciles, the two of them nattered away loudly between rooms, calling to each other through the kitchen like a couple who had been married for some twenty years. At the end, both fortress and mansion complete, they met in Kina’s room and snacked on Pez. As we do.

You wouldn’t know it, but today’s Parade is inspired by a little grey-green mottled half-globe that she picked up on the street one day. The heart she painted above it is identical to the tattoo she drew on my bicep later in the evening. All curlicues and glistening enamel, this kid.

This is the era of birthday parties with thirty full-grown kids throwing rocks at garbage cans and making their own pizzas and diving into enormous sweaty piles of first-graders to grasp at candies spilled from the guts of a maybe-too-small piñata, under the the sort of darkness five-year-olds dare not wander.

I’m not sure I wouldn’t burst into tears either.

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Her jokes are making progress. Slow progress, but progress.

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My stunt post today was going to be “write a newsletter about evening rituals until, inevitably, Kina calls out from her bedroom ritualistically demanding specific dimnesses for both the living room and the kitchen, and then say ha ha see she did it just now” except that she beat me to the punch, exactly as I opened up the editor to start typing. She also asked me if it’s gonna rain, which it is not, and even if it were, would not contribute meaningfully to her sleep or the lack thereof.

This is what counts for ritual here.

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I’ve still never been to the Intrepid, but I hear the skittles are good.

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We are lucky to love all of Kina’s doctors, but her allergist in particular, because Kina’s allergies are weird and most doctor’s offices are horrid. Dr. Patel, on the other hand, is ultra-cool and sweet, and so Kina really looks forward to her annual visit, whose protocol of pricking arms with itchy substances should in any other case provoke revulsion. This year, Kina’s signature niche sesame allergy came up a little light, and so we have to find a convenient occasion to feed her a hamburger bun—stressful but promising. Kina got a lollipop out of the bargain, which is like icing on the cake. Fun at the allergist—who knew?

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She knows how to find what she likes. Keep up, will you?

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This is not even the first time she’s attempted to wear a balloon as clothing, for what it’s worth. I wasn’t at the birthday party where Kina obtained said balloon—home recovering, as you might imagine—but it sounded like a total blast, and with the shine of New York Fashion Week still on the streets, Kina’s emergence from her friend’s birthday ball with painted face and balloon bet hit the scene like a ton of bricks.

As for me, I’m slowly healing up. Thanks to those of you who sent kind notes today. Will be making my way to a dentist so that I can get various teeth removed and evaluated tomorrow. In the meantime, Kina “still has [her] sea parent”, in her words, which comes as a great relief to all of us.

Hot gossip! I crashed my bike yesterday after work—Kina nowhere nearby, to be clear—and spent five hours in the ER getting my lip stitched and trying to account for my teeth. The publisher left me a sweet voice message on my phone after her (very recently terrified) mother assured her that she still had a father, and it left me feeling all sorts of complicated things about being a parent and a New Yorker and a bike commuter. She seems nonplussed by the whole affair, which has made it easier for me to work my way through this first day of recovery. As ever, she is a blessing and a beacon.

No broken bones, no concussion (as far as anyone can tell), a bit gnarly in the face in ways that will resolve themselves, and a little more gnarly in the teeth in ways that dentistry will help. I am still a father and the editor of this newspaper.

Remake streets for people. Watch your step. Wear a helmet.

It is hard for me to explain how this fundraiser works, but the kids are super passionate about it, and I can tell you for sure that quarters are bad.

dad

Shorter days, darker mornings. 6:45 is still 6:45.

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Kina spent like fifteen minutes carefully drawing and coloring this enormous portrait of herself to correct my portrait style, so I just made an edition out of it. She later scolded me for disregarding it as a guide for my subsequent illustrations.

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I remember telling Laurea, when Kina was very small and demanded we never leave her alone in her room, that eventually she would absolutely insist on being left alone in her room and make a real point of slamming the door to separate herself from us when she was feeling extra spicy about our parenting skills. We figured, like naive first-time parents, that we had at least until middle school before the first door was slammed in our house, but reader, we were wrong.

The teens come at you quickly. Sometimes in just five years.

dad

Georgia and Kina demanded a play date literally at the beginning of kindergarten, and they finally got it. We had to convince them to go home separately by promising not to wait another year.

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For her Uncle Ken’s birthday last night, Kina busted out her finest polyester princess dress and two pristine white satin evening gloves. We were meeting the birthday boy at a restaurant mainly known for its local take on the Bloomin’ Onion, baked pasta, and a chicken fried steak the size of a pizza, which would not seem to be the sort of venue at which white gloves are de rigeur, but they went over quite nicely with the staff nonetheless.

It bears noting that Kina did not eat with the gloves on, because that would be rude, but she did don them after dessert for a stroll down Vanderbilt Avenue, where she waved regally to the outdoor diners and bicyclists. We did eventually cross paths with another pink-gowned princess heading the opposite direction, and these two scions of nobility nodded at each other in passing, satin on satin in the dusk.

It was about a month ago that I proposed a theory of Kina’s late-night awakenings. If she had watched a particularly creepy movie (like Spirited Away, in this case) during the day—even if she had seemingly enjoyed every moment of it—Kina would wake up in terror the subsequent night.

Today, Kina confirmed that theory, cementing her inheritance from Laurea of good-scary-bad-scary vibes—the kind that has you selecting the “okay for monsters to touch me” headbands at the haunted house on Halloween and then screaming for help at every jump scare. It must be thrilling, but I can do without the nightmares.

dad

Yes, it’s creepy, but isn’t it sweet?

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I feel like this is true for me as well, but hour by hour.

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Sometimes—just sometimes—she is also agreeing with me.

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Ha ha just kidding the news is like a firehose of childhood factoids, even without the classroom goss.

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I don’t think I have ever seen a human being enter a medieval art museum with the same intensity as they might a laser tag arena, but this is Kina we are talking about, after all, and she was dressed as a princess, which maybe explains the vibe.

dad

Last year’s school family meetup was a little different from this year’s, in that Kina now knows more or less everybody milling around in McCarren Park—including her friend Runa from kindergarten and a little Venn diagram of past classrooms and music teachers. Funnily enough, Kina spent the whole day at last year’s family meetup with Runa, having only just met her; back then, the two of them decamped with uncommon ease to a random piece of playground equipment, forgetting their parents entirely.

This year, they decamped again with ease (now common) and strolled around the entire park together on secret adventures involving purses and popcorn. School has begun.

You haven’t lived until your first grader has come home to introduce you to this new game she invented called Truth or Dare, which means you either have to spout a fact or do a dare—neither of which is super consequential in her version of things. It’s just a fun choice.

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Kina has been asking me to make little paper first-place ribbons to give to friends and new teachers. She colors them in with crayon and draws a little “1” on each of them. She places them in the pockets of her backpack for when she needs to recognize the most important people in her life. I have never received such a ribbon.

One day, maybe.

dad

I love a first day of school edition. Never fails to capture her joy, bravery, and elegance in the face of growth. We’ve been building up to this day at the bottom of the edition for a long time now, and she’s felt it. Today, she put on her little jumper and crisp white shirt for the first time—a dramatic shift from her laissez-faire, rainbow-themed apparel from kindergarten—and stepped out of the house for her first numbered year of school. There, among the big kids, she found her classmates (old and new) clustered near the edge of the playground-for-the-little-ones and gave them all big hugs. Her new teachers gave her a sticker with her name on it and she wandered off into the crowd with an ease we’ve come to expect, but which is entirely different from her demeanor at drop-off last year, when she sent us off longingly from inside the kindergarten fence. Today, she knew where she was, who she was, and how to navigate the place. Walking away was like drifting off to sleep.

Mommy and I went to get a coffee, looked at our pictures, and trusted the big kid in the beige jumper and yellow shoes to figure it out on her own.

Happy first day of school to all who celebrate.

There is probably no theme more typical of this summer than Kina’s sudden escalation in bravery. In the last two months, she’s taken up dunking, swimming, climbing various nets and logs at the playground, talking to dogs, and riding thrill rides at Coney Island (including a Tilt-a-Whirl ride that had Daddy close to emptying his guts). Yesterday’s visit to an adventure gym was no exception to this trend, and Kina spent the entire day with her friends there jumping, falling, and careening in ways that kindergarten Kina never would.

We are so proud of her.

On the topic of pride, how proud we are of the child who, tomorrow morning, will become a first grader! She finally made it across the margin! Kudos to our tiny publisher, who never fails to remind her newsroom who signs the checks.

Fitting that we were able to spend part of the last official day of summer with some grandparents, all of whom have made this season an exceptional one.

dad

It is worth noting that what we thought would be our last big water trip of the weekend (and possibly the summer) was trumped at the last minute by yet another trip to the local pool this morning. Laurea says we’re going to the pool again next weekend, which further demonstrates the prominence that water and swimming played in Kina’s summer vacation this year.

At the beginning of the summer, Kina merely loved the ocean, and now she adores the water. She went from a real fear of getting her face wet to being able to swim to me in a pool from several feet away—head submerged the entire time. From floaties to none, jumpers to dunkers, this kid is a true water child.

And I, as official sea parent, have spent nearly every minute of the child’s water life this summer with her in the ocean, gasping for air between dunkers and dragged around by a cackling five-year-old from sand to swells.

And with that, just four more days until the start of school, and the end of a memorable, noticeable, present summer. We last visited Stylist Christina in July, which seems not that long ago, but is definitely long ago. She continues to top herself in braid techniques with this magnificent criss-cross pattern that I wish she’d teach me to reproduce at home. I tried to convince her to teach braiding lessons; we’ll see if she steps up to the plate.

Then Kina made some cookies with her mother, mixed up a bunch of different ice creams into a so-called Super Flavor Deluxe, and rode her bike to McCarren Park for a jaunt in the swings. Not pictured: Everything else we did.

This means Kina has visited the Statue of Liberty one (1) more time than her father has in the 26 years he has lived in New York.

(That would be zero (0) times.)

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Somehow, Kina ended up introducing Hannah to Central Park for the very first time yesterday, showing her all the cool things you can do with boulders and laying on blankets under trees.

Six more days!?

dad

Kina’s been attending the end-of-summer park bash since before she was two. There is music, dancing, food, and mud pies (the kids’ contribution). It is a major affair and we are glad it is back.

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This is not the first time Kina has showed up in this newspaper wearing my headphones and pretending to have a job. The last time we covered this topic was April of last year, when we were all busy getting vaccinated and feeling optimistic about the future, and I had a lot to say about humane workplaces and what it meant for Kina to be modeling the kind of work that fosters them. I would encourage you to go back and read that newsletter again, if you haven’t in a while.

What I guess I hadn’t realized is how frequently I emerge frantically from my room, still talking to whomever is presently staring at an empty chair and hearing me retrieve lunch. Neither had I ever said the words “WE ARE PLANNING TO MAKE MONEY” in the way that Kina is suggesting here.

What I can confirm is that I spend a lot of time talking, and on the focus we pay to talking. Does it all make a difference?

Sheesh!

dad

The story here is that yesterday was nothing new or stood out as a discovery of some childhood skill, but that so much happens on a Sunday for us that it doesn’t fit in the dek field of the post editor and I just have to tell you that she ate dumplings for dinner on top of everything else yesterday. Nothing special, sure, but an iconic August Sunday, which we will now always remember.

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Kina calls him “Jersey Julian” because Julian was already taken by Sloane’s brother. He is twelve years old and a boy, and every time Kina visits him in New Jersey (which is why he is called “Jersey Julian”), the two of them spend the entire day alone together talking and playing. Julian seems not just amused by Kina, but genuinely engaged and conversational. It is a strange and beautiful friendship that we revisit every year.

At Belmar Beach yesterday, the two of them dived and tumbled in the waves—Julian on his own, as a large kid, and Kina with me, as a small one. Both could have spent the entire day being swallowed up by the breakers and plucking stranded jellyfish from the high-tide line, except that one of the pair had a parent who was waterlogged and exhausted and needed to spend some time on the sand.

We did not, for the record, pick one way or the other, but Laurea and I are both thrilled to have the strong and clever daughter we got, all by chance. Kina caught her mother by surprise when she posed the question last night, which went a bit like, “Did you know whether you were gonna have a daughter?”

We did, and it was a daunting revelation—as it might have been in some other universe in which we were having a son. At the time, it felt specific to Kina and the challenges of gender she might someday face, but I think, in hindsight, that it’s just scary knowing that you’re responsible for bringing any human being of any gender into a world in which they might fall into its traps and habits.

Mommy is really into news about the global supply chain.

Also: Have you noticed how Kina is taking greater and greater control over the production of this publication? We welcome a hands-on, in-the-weeds publisher! What if this newsletter eventually became Kina’s own blog?!?! Stay tuned for the next eight years and find out!

dad (a recovering blogger)

For as long as I can remember, I have been trying to get Kina to count to three and take deep breaths when she is angry, to no avail. Repeated screenings of Daniel Tiger, gentle summonings of her inner Kina when she is enraged, practicing while calm—nothing reaches her when she’s in the zone.

Yesterday, though, as I responded huffily to a text from work, Kina walked up beside me and held my hand up into the air, slowly lowering it as she counted to four.

“Breathe in,” she said, as I breathed in.

Kina’s epic tour of the greater tri-state area continues, passing a block-long bouncy castle in midtown on her way back from Liberty Science Center. Fortunately, she was too hot and tired to drag Hannah through it, but I expect to see this caterpillar in a future issue.

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Have we talked about the fact that Kina no longer tolerates displays of affection between her parents? It’s the biggest flash point in our relationship with her now, and we can almost guarantee that a meltdown will follow even the slightest smooch between us. I thought we got away with this one. Don’t ask me how she knew we kissed—it is a total mystery to me.

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