Always listen to scientists.

dad

Kina, age three, had just started taking ballet classes when the lockdown hit. Her ballet school had arranged for a recital in June of 2020, and we’d ordered a little pink tutu from the school that was due to arrive in May. It did not arrive on time, as you might imagine, and the recital never happened. We picked up the tutu at the front door of the studio in September, and Kina proceeded to wear it at home every day for several months. I wrote about this on September 5, 2020, under the headline “Ballerina, Denied Recital, Wears Tutu Nonetheless”.

According to this august publication, Kina and Sloane started taking secret Covid dance classes all the way back on March 19, 2021. At the time, those classes were really more of a hopping-and-balancing school than anything else, conducted by a local dancer whose performance work had (understandably) dried up. Fast forward just two months, though, and our local ballerina was teaching her parents how to execute a perfect port de bras. In April of this year, Kina admonished me to focus if I wanted to be a ballet dancer.

And yesterday, with her friend Sloane, in a brand new pink tutu, she danced the Waltz of the Flowers from the Nutcracker, which took all of a minute and a half to play out, but represented the culmination of fifteen months of joyful practice. It was delayed a week as their teacher recovered from Covid, but unlike Kina’s earlier pandemic recital, this time the show went on.

On Tuesday, when careful readers will recall that Kina made a surprise visit to the Bronx Zoo, I woke up early and felt a little thrill that I would be going to the zoo on my first day of summer vacation. I could take my time getting ready, put on some shorts, toss some cheddar bunnies in the backpack, and hop on the train for a jaunt with the hippos. It took me all of three blissful seconds to recall that I was not Kina, that I last had a school break in 1996, and that I would not, on any random Tuesday, be going to the zoo.

After I graduated from college (during which, even on semester breaks, I would work for the summer), I felt for several years the phantom limb of the school calendar hanging off the side of my body. September would come, and I would work. Mid-December, the work continued. The cherry blossoms emerged and fell, and still there was work. When your formative years put tight creases at the edges of summer, it’s hard not to trip over them year after year. I think a lot of the early bitterness and resentment that comes with adulthood is built on the lost formlessness of summertime—replaced by The Hustle.

Eventually, though, the creases smoothed out, and I came to accept reluctantly that one works whenever one can (the alternative being more difficult logistically from a rent and food standpoint), and the vast expanse of summer abandon withered off to three little holiday nubs of Memorial Day, July 4th, and Labor Day. This is fine, or was, until my child graduated from Kindergarten, and I woke up on the first day of her summer break thinking I had two months of unbridled liberty and fun visits to the zoo and aquarium—and then had to go to work with that droning on in my head all day.

Bajour!

dad

End of an era, out with a burrito.

dad

At least somebody in this house has a reasonable brain this week and is getting a good night’s sleep.

dad

Inexplicably, I have no photos of the first time Kina met her classmates at the turtle fountain in McCarren Park, but I did manage to discover a short piece in the September 12, 2021 issue that covered the affair:

Now she’s buds with all those opaque shadow children! They fill water balloons together and make mischief! They have all now become school chums, and I have become a class dad who knows the other class dads, and I realize now that I will spend the next several years of my life in New York City watching these kids grow up and being friends with the class dads.

Yesterday, as I was writing out a list of things people could do as we move forward to create a better government and society, I wrote out the following rough list:

• Protest

• Run

• Vote

• Fund

• Aid

• Speak

• Amplify

Each of these words came with a rudimentary description of the ways in which I felt I personally needed to do that thing. Vote locally (for example) for representatives with real spine and energy, and to maintain the majority; protest, in every sense of the word, to build that spine in our existing representatives; fund organizations that will help people in need in hostile states to obtain safe abortions, but also fund the candidates you want to vote for, and fund mutual aid societies that support the people most at risk now—who are often also most at risk of being unhoused, assaulted, and unfed.

I refuse to let six robed judicial goons deny this child her well-deserved flowers.

This is the third end-of-year celebration Kina has had since the inception of The Daily Kina, but in many ways the most significant of the three. Songs were sung, capes were decorated, names were announced, her grandparents were watching. This time, unlike the last two, Kina had spent months with the other children in her class and had grown up with them. She introduced us to her friends and hugged them with abandon.

Laurea cried. And not just for the reasons that parents tend to at these affairs, but also because of the goons.

Thanks to Ms Chelsea, Kina’s kindergarten teacher, who accomplished the impossible on a daily basis over the course of the last school year. Kina loves you, and she thinks you have astonishing taste in dresses.

dad

Kina really struggled to make sense of our evening alone yesterday while I couldn’t speak, thinking somehow that she wasn’t being fun enough to make me engage her in conversation. Sorry, kid.

In case it is hard to read, here is what the illustration of our top headline depicts:

Kina, shouting from other room: “DADDY YOUR NAME IS SPACE TOOTH!”

I knew I should have brought the bike.

dad

Kina did most of the illustrations today, as a bit of a belated Father’s Day gift. Someday, you’ll have to ask Laurea about waking up to a blood-red child and how long it took to realize that Kina had simply taken a red brush marker and painted her entire body with it. Other than that, it’s all about the random butter quote. And we’re out.

dad

Happy Father’s Day to me and to this kid and her mother who worked so hard to make me a father, and to other fathers out there who are working to get it right, and to those of you who don’t find this day as joyous as I do—I hope you find comfort today.

Dad jokes all around—you deserve them.

I will remind the long term readers that the earliest editions of this newspaper focused on our efforts to get Kina to poop in the toilet, and now she knows what a crush is.

dad

How could I possibly interrupt this genius for such a trivial distraction as oral hygiene?

dad

I don’t know how I feel about Kina practicing her lying skills, but at least we are doing it together, so fine. I’ve been fooled!!

dad

While literally nobody was watching, some of Kina’s friends made a little murder thriller on a phone in the leafy corner of McCarren Park. Kina played “Detective 3”; she had a line, but they cut it because she forgot to hit her mark.

It was: “Oh, no! Another victim!”

dad

I really hesitated to run today’s top headline, but it needed to be addressed. We will have no further comment at this time.

dad

Late dispatch about the chaos babies at the block party.

dad

Sometimes I wonder how many times I can write about Kina not wanting us to speak, and then she finds an entirely new way to shut us up and I’m like “history needs this quote”. Eventually I will take Kina’s long-demanded vow of silence, and all of this will make a lot more sense.

Kina came up with the concept of “DOT BOOKE” this morning, and the thesis was so promising: just a bit page full of dots. Suffice it to say, angels and flowers are inevitable when it comes to Parade.

Kina’s really catching up on the snuggles now that Laurea is back. Also, hard to explain the bag of body waste joke; you’ll just have to watch it.

dad

Like all of us, Kina’s never seen a deal she couldn’t still make better.

dad

I do value the training of our city’s public school teachers, but I think everybody involved is wondering why we don’t do it on consecutive days. I have no further comment here.

dad

I met Laurea for the first time more or less exactly twenty years ago, which I wrote about more or less exactly ten years ago, which was about four and a half years before Kina was born, which is to say that everything is a whole lot different this time around.

To set the context for the uninformed: Laurea was visiting New York on June 8th, 2002, not thinking particularly of spending the rest of the summer here, or with me, let alone for the next two decades of her life. You can read the post linked above for a brief play-by-play of the ensuing decade, but I want to reflect here for a little bit on the happy accident of somebody I almost randomly encountered twenty years ago now sharing with me a child, a home, and a considerable portion of her taste in music.

I could have stayed at home that night, but I didn’t. I don’t know what happens to me in the alternate universe in which I do stay home, but I’ve never dwelled on that universe with any real curiosity. I do not want to contemplate that universe any more that I like to contemplate the ones where I am not born, or where cheeseburgers do not exist, or where I never get the apartment I have lived in also for the last twenty years.

Kina’s recent pernicious sleep problems haven’t prompted the same despair in me and in Laurea as her last several regressions, mostly because:

1. We know that this will pass.

2. Every sleep regression comes with some sort of developmental surprise.

In this case, for the first time, Kina has been able to articulate that the sleep regression is about the developmental surprise—and that the leaps taken by her brain at the moment are rocking the nighttime boat. Something unexplainable is happening inside that little noggin, and it’s been a huge pain in the ass for all involved. In the last three weeks, Kina has emerged from her bedroom in tears, complaining about various combinations of the following:

Yesterday, after a “sooo good” lunch of Phở and a spin on the carousel as a family in DUMBO, Laurea headed off to meet a friend and left us sitting in the shade by the waterfront. Kina watched the ferries pass in the distance and waves roll off in their wake. As the waves funneled into the inlet by the carousel, they broke against the boulders with surprising force, splashing various couples taking their engagement photos and groups of kids scampering along the shore. Kina rested her elbows on my shoulders and muttered “here’s a good one” whenever she spotted a particularly promising swell. Once, two ferries and a huge barge passed simultaneously underneath the Manhattan Bridge; Kina and I waited with eager anticipation as the waves snuck in across each other and slammed into the rocks, drenching several tourists taking selfies.

We sat there for longer than I would have expected her to want to stay, just taking pleasure in the boats, the water, and the comedy. It was the highlight of our day.

dad

As the old man in a bar in the opening scenes of a horror movie might say, we don’t get visitors around here much these days. In light of that, the fact that Kina got to meet two sets of friends from far away (counting Chicago as “far” and Hong Kong as “farther”) this weekend was an enormous treat for her—and hopefully for all of them. Half of these guests had never met Kina before, so they got the full five years all at once. They brought her fancy candy, though, so they got the good five years.

Today’s Parade theme is “colors”, but a key player in today’s still life is a bushel of peaches dyed in indigo. As one does.

I don’t know if Kina is truly aware of the “grand scheme of things”, as we understand it, but she is at least accidentally right that the few small indiscretions and indulgences of her daily life don’t add up to much when you hold them up against everything else that is going on in the world these days—let alone the inconceivable vastness of time and the known universe. Hard to say which of those things is more brutal, but a popsicle is an easy win by comparison.

dad

I have no idea what it means to be playtime monitor, but Kina is proud.

dad

We would all be better off if we greeted each other by name and acknowledged the day of the week, is all I am saying.

But I am also saying that my mango today is astonishing.

dad

We are all a little sleepy today. Tomorrow is another day.

dad

Yes, we are in New York yet.

dad

Allow me this moment to feel pride in my brilliant child and her novel puzzle technique (no edges).

dad

Various combinations of parents, grandparents, and uncle spent the day entertaining Kina yesterday: traipsing from playground (ooo rocks) to playground (too challenging) to kiddie train (enchanting) to inflatable pool (cold!)

She was grateful and fun and energetic—a blessing for the end of this prior week, and a gift for her grandparents. Grandma got a little motion sick riding backwards on the train, but it appears to have been worth it.

By the time this issue was produced, Kina was finally, at long last, indisputably in Virginia.

dad

We went to Kina’s school art show yesterday and managed to find her art tacked up in a little corner of the gymnasium among the other kindergartners’ works on paper. It was strangely—maybe not strangely—moving.

Kina’s favorite thing from the show? “The pastries.”

dad

Just bringing you Kina’s view of the world for today, including some of her original art that inspired this morning’s admittedly escapist edition. This is why.

dad

p.s. In the lower cartoon, I am saying “I need to poo but I want to watch TV,” and Laurea is confused. Thought you’d want to know that.

I forgot to send this yesterday, for reasons probably obvious to every parent who subscribes to this publication. I will not belabor the point; I did not expect to be grateful to have Kina home sick from school in 2022, but here we are.

dad

Boys need to stop.

dad

A full issue of beach coverage today, from the child who spent hours yesterday frolicking in the unspeakably cold water at Fort Tilden and then rolling around in the sand like a sea lion. True heads know that the weekend before Memorial Day is the best beach trip ever.

dad

Laurea and I have watched the Dance Parade on three occasions—all totally by accident.

The first time (before Kina), Laurea and I were wandering through Union Square and saw a group of Bolivian dancers spinning down Broadway, which was a magical superimposition on the city.

The second time was with Kina, when she was barely two; we were strolling up Lafayette and saw Saint Marks blocked off—we walked back past the rest of the parade onto University Place, where Kina spent two hours on my shoulders watching various dance troupes and floats roll past.

When I tried to get her to tell me the names of the other four kids, she told me to “stop talking please”.

dad

The sounds of secret snacking.

dad

I keep observing this phenomenon from afar, here at The Daily Kina HQ, in which Kina demands a hug from Laurea after doing something mildly annoying to me, which Laurea reluctantly grants. Kina, noting her mother’s reluctance, then requests further hugs for no particular reason, other than that Laurea is playing it low-key so as not to amplify her rising frustration, which worries Kina. Kina then asks for more hugs to confirm her mother’s love for her (about which, to be clear, there is no question), which Laurea rightly sees as a troubling pattern, triggering further urgency about the hugs. I do not know what to do about any of this, but I suspect there’s something in here about the way that children and their parents need each other, and how endearing and frustrating that can be for all involved.

We don’t take it for granted.

dad

It turns out I had already written about Kina’s secrets last August—a top headline, even! Still, her use of whispers has become more calculated, sophisticated, and frequent in the intervening months, and I love how today’s headline conveys the extent to which Kina will attempt to subvert my popsicle bans.

I almost led with the bit about Kina saying that I sound like I’m barfing when I brush my teeth, which would have been more original, but I didn’t want to subject you all to that. Also, it’s inaccurate. I think.

dad

There is literally no way to stop her from echoing every single thing you say.

From the bathroom: THERE IS LITRALLY NO WAY TO STOP HER FROM ECHOING EVERYTHING YOU SAY

It is as bad as everybody told you.

I did my best, honestly, which is about all you can expect of anybody these days. We eat soup, ride in elevators, and try to keep our feet to ourselves.

Some great bunnies in today’s Parade, each dedicated to a member of our family. Kina is getting really good at block lettering. And bunnies.

Her patience pays off. My favorite illustration today is the one where Kina is walking proudly through the house holding her shorts. Kina’s favorite illustration is the one where she is sneezing—with shorts.

dad

What is so real, anyway, that we should see fit to give it a name? Mozzarella sticks, maybe, and Kina.

dad