The acting editor in chief has already taken a strange left turn.

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The tooth fairy is unsure whether or not the physical tooth must be present for reimbursement or not. She contemplates the possibility that Kina might mint an NFT of her first lost tooth, which would be far more valuable, potentially, depending on the continued implosion of late-stage capitalism. Teeth! Teeth! Teeth!

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None of the adults involved in this vignette have any idea what the many boring secrets actually are, which is a new and weird development in the area of kid secrets.

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When Kina helped me draw the very first Daily Kina, she was barely three years old, and now she is barely five—or almost five and a half, which is how five-year-olds work. One year ago, I wrote a long newsletter about what this paper meant to me at the moment of its first anniversary. I will admit that it felt like a little victory lap, since all of us were getting our vaccines and certainly the pandemic would be over soon; I remember telling Laurea that I’d either stop when Kina started kindergarten or when the pandemic was over, and while the first of those two deadlines has long passed, the second seems likely (as I suspected last year) never to come—which means I’ll be writing this newspaper for the rest of my natural, fully-boosted life. The uncertainty never quits here at The Daily Kina.

The pandemic played a slightly less prominent role in the last year of The Daily Kina than it had in 2020, which the exception of the aforementioned vaccines (including Kina’s own prompt vaccination amidst the very peak of Omicron. So, what took its place? Simple things happened. Kina started kindergarten. She turned five. Her cousin Otis turned zero. A land war broke out in Europe. Mostly, Kina grew up. Her toddler malapropisms gave way to sophisticated and often baffling interrogations about the inner workings of her big-girl mind and the universe.

Maybe the best thing about the last year (for the purposes of this publication) is that Kina learned to read. I introduced a “Young Reader’s Section” on May 28th, for two reasons: first, because I wanted Kina to spend more time reading; and second, because I was tired of coming up with four headlines every weekday (bet you didn’t notice that cost-saving measure). Every day I draw and write a newspaper entirely about Kina, and while that is in part selfish work, it is still fundamentally for her, and so it makes me happy that she can now directly consume the work that I do for her (or at least a little of it). For a long time, Kina could not be pestered to read the word of the day without my drawing a picture of it, but she eventually came around and started sounding things out—and now she is just shouting out the word of the day as she runs to the bathroom. Hooray for Ms. Chelsea and her reading lessons.

Kina swears up and down that the only reason she hissed “Go! Go!” at me yesterday morning, as I was doing a little Dad boogie on the sidewalk in front of her and her friends, was because she didn’t want me to take the tittering of her fellow kindergartners too personally. She underestimates my tolerance for ridicule. I almost certainly overestimate her tolerance for others’ ridicule of me.

I will get my dances in while I can, child.

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The child, as always, has it all figured out.

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You don’t gotta go home but you can’t stay here.

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It had never, in my many years of life, occurred to me that kindergarten was just a school that teaches you how to go to school, and that school is just teaching you how to go to work, and honestly now I’m slightly mad about kindergarten—but Kina really is a good listener, and that makes me really proud, because listening can be a subversive (and supportive) act in all the ways she will someday need to be subversive (and supportive).

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Five. The answer is five, if we assume that Laurea and my cousin Erica really do leave the swings after drinking all that beer.

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It is also the wisest question she has ever asked, which is what I thought she said until she very sternly corrected me.

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Upon inspection of today’s top headline, Kina pointed out that I had misrepresented the visual artifacts in the field of darkness inside her eyes, drew a giant purple “L” on the illustration, looked at it pensively, and declared the paper “okay”. She also painted the wiggly tooth bright pink.

Today’s Parade is a garden, as usual, of colors under a setting sun. It might seem coincidental that the palette is so similar to her eyelid landscape—but this is Kina’s brain, of course, so it’s all of a piece.

HOW COULD THIS POSSIBLY BE HAPPENING ALREADY?

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There are few things that casually frustrate me more than having a thought in my head and watching it evaporate as somebody utters even a single word. My brain requires silence to operate at full capacity!

Kina has clearly inherited this from me—or maybe it’s something that happens to literally everybody, not sure. In any case, she is on a very special planet of distraction where slurping is the loudest noise of all.

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It is surprising how little I know about this topic—why we grow and then stop growing, what it feels like, how it all works. Even Ted Ed doesn’t have a five minute explainer on this.

I should have paid better attention in biology.

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The little disgusting mysteries continue in the dark corners of Kina’s little schoolyard.

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The thing is, you know exactly what she means.

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Our publisher sends her best wishes to Matt and Dominique, who got married yesterday as she looked on blissfully. She regrets that they did not twirl each other, but admits there are many years yet for them to twirl.

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When Kina was still barely a year old, she developed a passionate interest in birds and would chase them unsteadily around the playground shouting “BOOD!!! BOOOOOOOO-UUUUURDS!!!”

Years later, in the middle of the pandemic, she built a cordial relationship with a particular pigeon, whom we named Pigeon Friend:

Speaking of birds, we have befriended a shabby-looking pigeon who comes to roost on our fire escape. We recognize him because of his rakish little white underwings, and because he’s utterly imperturbable. Kina talks to him while sitting on our dresser, asking him how he’s doing, and telling him that he can be my (Dad’s) little brother. In return, he stares at her with his beady little orange eyes. They are the best of friends.

Kina has collected many plastic gemstones and random pieces of Laurea’s jewelry collection over the years for the sole purpose of becoming a crystal healer, apparently. She is now in full possession of my life’s savings.

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I don’t know what happened between when I was a kid and today, but in those intervening four decades, we turned leprechauns into the Easter Bunny of St. Patrick’s Day, and I just wasn’t prepared for a generous new character on the holiday calendar. The leprechaun did not bring Kina any money this year, for what it’s worth, nor did we capture any (or even attempt it).

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Our esteemed publisher would like you all to know that she was among the listening angels, unjustly punished for the actions of the rowdy boys. Dismantle the patriarchy.

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Kina got a tummyache at lunch yesterday, and maybe it was because of sesame oil? Hard to say, because I am not a doctor and the nurse is also not a doctor and also it’s hard to say what it feels like to have a tummyache when you are five. Fortunately, I work exclusively at home because of an ongoing pandemic and can walk to her school in under five minutes. While I’m not sure that being there was any more instructive than talking to her on the phone, I was at least able to talk face-to-face with Kina and feel reasonably assured that she wasn’t in anaphylactic shock or anything that was headed in that general direction; I gave her a hug and a kiss and watched her walk back to class with an administrator before heading home uneasily and… hosting a three-hour long online conference session. This is how the universe sets things up for me; I don’t make the rules.

So I basically sat in my bedroom and gesticulated thoughtfully on Zoom for a few hours and panicked privately until Kina returned home and frolicked around as if nothing had ever happened. Apparently her tummyache went away just as soon as she walked into her classroom. Huzzah! I have no idea how much of her little bout of heartburn was directly related to something she ate and how much could be attributed to the stress of talking to grownups about what the tummyache could signify, but the brain-gut feedback loop is strong in me, and I imagine it played at least a small part in her experience yesterday as well.

I was a little bit worried that Kina would develop an aversion to lunch or nurses from the whole experience, so I tried to get ahead of that at dinner last night, but when I asked her what she remembered most about her visit to the school nurse, all she said was, “I thought I saw my friend Andrew’s sister there, and when I asked her if she was Andrew’s sister, she said no.” If that’s all she remembers, it’s a good enough sign, I guess. Sorry, Andrew’s sister. Better luck next time.

I really just asked her to put on her jacket before going downstairs, but now I’m questioning more or less everything about my own judgement.

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Laurea flew off this morning to her first actual in-person event in over two years, and Kina was ambivalent. She’s come to expect us here, most of the time, ever since she was three years old, and since her brain has skipped ahead faster than our work travel has, she’s just now coming to a much sharper understanding of what it means to be away from us. She can feel the difference between a night out (as I had with Futura’s dad recently) and a week away, and she’s keen to know which she’s signed up for when one of us steps out of the door.

Something about this phase of cognitive development seems to have triggered in Kina some fear of uncertainty—in our absence, and in the timing of our return. Today’s second headline is actually a good illustration of this. We told her this morning that her friends are going to start having birthday parties that she can attend without us, and while she seemed copacetic with the broader notion, the whole framing of these parties as “drop-off parties” and not “drop-off-and-pick-up later parties” made her wonder why we’d leave our most precious daughter at some godforsaken trampoline emporium for an indeterminate period of time.

We promised her that we’d come back, when the party was over.

No, Kina, you may not “go down and get a box when you guys are asleep”. You are effectively still a baby and the world is full of vultures. Maybe when you’re in second grade. Maybe.

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I have been doing lots of thinking about best friends lately, because Kina has been talking about best friends, and I’ve been thinking about what best friends cost us. One of the things I don’t think I noticed about growing older was when I stopped mentally ranking my friends—a behavior thrust upon us in childhood and reinforced (for those of us born after 1985) by MySpace. Instead, I find I think about friends for different frames of mind. The justice friend. The jazz friend. The electric bike friend. The friend who understands that part of me that got stoned and listened extensively to Aphex Twin in college. The dad friend. The nihilist friend. All of them meet different parts of me, and I’m grateful for each of them (and the other twenty to fifty of them who have carved out little homes in my mind).

Every day, when I drop Kina off at school, I see the little kids outside their classroom, shuffling around to make time with the person they want most to be associated with. Even at five years old, I see these little girls boxing each other out to preserve their statuses with each other. They are all trying to figure out their best friendships. Kina wants a best friend. And her other friends want best friends. And those relationships aren’t necessarily all symmetrical—though maybe one of the best friends also wants to be Kina’s best friend, for now. I don’t know what it all means, but all the little kids are willing to slag off every other little kid in the universe in favor of their respective best friends.

This feels risky, right?

I wish I could tell you that I was making all these secret clubs up.

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“We found a secret corner of the playground and we took down our masks and Georgia put candy inside because we are not supposed to eat candy but that way Ms. Chelsea wouldn’t see us.”

A continuing series on the evident extreme sneakiness of kindergartners.

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We are a shoes-off household, but the exception proves the rule.

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The worst possible thing is to be told to do exactly the thing you most intend to do, as if it wasn’t already the best idea that you already came up with totally on your own. On this, Kina and I are in complete agreement.

Also, as a reminder: Tree juice is apple juice.

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I somehow forgot to include that Kina and Laurea also stumbled across a parade of astronauts (or was it astronauts in a non-astronaut parade?) in McCarren Park and were given a gift of moon rocks. It was, by all accounts, a bountiful Mommy-Daughter time.

The Cheese Rock is fine.

Kina got a little mad at me today and then did a not-nice thing that led to my putting her in time out, where she stewed silently for five minutes as she awaited her release. The fact that she didn’t scream and weep as I carried her to the room felt novel somehow, as did her seething discontent upon my return.

She kicked around the living room for a few moments, agreeing that she probably should not have spit in my face but not really promising never to spit in my face in the future. She gave me the cold shoulder and then marched to my room, where she buried herself under a blanket (pictured above).

Kina does not like to say that she is sorry. She will do nearly anything to avoid saying the words out loud, which is super irritating to me—the person to whom she most often owes an apology—and I often just push and push for her verbal acknowledgment of having wronged me. I have seen her go as far as mouthing the words while holding her breath, as if to form a regret-shaped die through which sorrow would otherwise be extruded, if only the material were there.

Publisher wanted to take the reins today.

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It’s hard to tell the difference between a dream dreamt by a five-year-old girl and a dream invented by a five-year-old girl. Either way, the things that happen in her brain are far better than anything in my own (or outside it, for that matter).

The joke in this headline, apparent only to the most diligent of long-time readers, is that this publication suspected Kina of rampant dream fabrication over a year ago and has spent the last twelve months digging.

I take my callbacks whenever I can get them.

By far the most salacious news about Kina’s development as a kindergartner was that she has been running an underground art club at quiet time. Her co-conspirators vary by day, but membership in the club appears to be widespread. When I asked Kina what they made in art club, she replied, “Hearts. Just hearts.”

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Let’s all take a trip on the bedtime blimp tonight, shall we? There are cozy pillows and a personal concierge. You have a cabin to yourself and your choice of jammies. The flight will continue until you drift off to sleep, when you will be tucked into bed with all your favorite stuffies. Let’s make this a trip you take every night, okay? Your ticket will always be waiting at the desk, and the flight attendant will always be astonished to find out how important you are. And you are always, always very important.

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Hello to little Julia from Weehawken, whose Ukrainian parents drove her into the East Village to be close to their community after what has been an awful week. We hope you enjoyed your time on the playground with Kina, and we hope your parents get some sleep soon; you all deserve it. Everybody deserves to play all day and sleep in peace.

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After seven long weeks at the strangest Olympics he has ever witnessed, Kina’s beloved uncle Ken has returned to the country from China, in possession of big hugs and a collectible panda stuffie. We are pleased to report that Kina is thrilled.

I learned in the minutes following yesterday’s delivery that the New York Times (which recent readers will remember is my second workplace) featured another piece on how (and whether) to talk to kids about war. While there are numerous ways to offer financial support to organizations on the ground in Ukraine, you may be interested in donating to Voices of Children, which offers psychological counseling and support for traumatized children there. Finally, I would be remiss if I did not point out that countless societies and their children have been living under occupation (by our own country, at times) and war since time immemorial; this particular crisis calls our attention to imperialism everywhere, and the children who must survive it.

This apartment is perfect, but it is gonna need a second bathroom if this family hopes to stay together.

Back in the distraction game for the day, which I think I definitely need, but I want to thank a bunch of you for sending notes in response to yesterday’s newsletter. I have found surprisingly little out there on the topic of speaking to smaller kids about war (and still plan not to mention it to Kina), but there is this piece in The Independent1 that suggests a few criteria for whether or not to bring it up proactively with your child—their age (eight years old or older being the guideline from the article), your family’s proximity to the conflict, and the chance that they will hear about the war elsewhere. As with all parenting-related topics, this seems as much a matter for judgement as anything else, but for a kid like Kina—too young to process this, and fortunately not affected personally by the invasion of Ukraine—we are likely to absorb the news on her behalf, keep her safe, and continue to advocate for peace and the protection of children everywhere from military conflict.

In 1986, I was laying in my room, looking at the ceiling, and worrying about nuclear war. This was before the fall of the Berlin Wall, and the leaders of the United States and the Soviet Union were still on the cusp of the Reykjavík Summit and slowly testing the reduction in tensions around the Cold War. I don’t know why I was worried about nuclear war in 1986, other than that I was twelve years old and suddenly aware of what the ramifications of what a war—Cold or otherwise—could be for me. I remember my mom coming into the room, and I remember talking to her about it, but I do not remember what she said, and I wish I could remember now, because I have no idea what I will tell Kina when she becomes suddenly aware of the terrifying prospects of geopolitical conflict.

In the last day, I’ve had to really wrestle with what I should and shouldn’t talk about in front of Kina. The invasion of Ukraine is scary and senseless, and it brings back lots of memories from the 1980s and my childhood—The Day After, War Games, the general threat of bombs and Reaganomics and the faceless threat of Socialism (on which I now have a totally different perspective!) Laurea and I talk around corners from Kina as she eats Pirate’s Booty, waiting until she goes to bed before starting our doomscrolling. I spend a lot of time thinking about what I will say when Kina picks up on the fact that a land war in Europe has unfolded. She understands countries, but not conflict. Cuisines, but not governments. Languages, but not territories.

How do I back into the idea of “war”? Of armies? Of history? Of the Soviet Union? Of Stalin? Of men who like to compare themselves favorably with Stalin? Of imperialism? Of fighter jets? Of missiles? Of “civilians”?

I hope that this revelation about Kina and her soft spot for shy girls is marginally soothing after a deeply disturbing geopolitical day. I’d tell you to worry about yourself, but adults have to do the worrying so the kids can enjoy the wind. I’m sorry that you have to worry, if you’re worrying. Let’s do this again tomorrow.

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I don’t think I know what camp is anymore, but Kina is at one all week long in a building around the corner and seems to be enjoying the parkour bits and the fact that we send her there with a thermos full of hot pasta.

I think we are supposed to be skiing right now? I suppose I might be fine with parkour.

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Kina is maybe even shorter than Ollie, who is one year younger than her, but she is still the big girl in her own mind—and, to some extent, Ollie’s. (Lulu accepts Kina’s status as the big girl, which is clearly gratifying to Kina.)

While we have your attention, our publisher would like to offer a clarification to our early morning edition: Yes, Kina was taking Ollie and Lulu to pizza, but for our benefit, not Ollie’s. We hope this detail helps your understanding of the news of the day.

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It is extremely charming to see Kina being so protective of her newborn cousin, especially when he is surrounded only but people who love him dearly. Good practice for when she will need to scare off bullies after school when she’s a teenager and he’s just finding his middle school legs. New Yorkers protect New Yorkers, cousins get cousins.

He is a little stinker, though, and faintly savory, in the best way.

Editor’s Note: I am thinking that this is maybe my favorite masthead ever? Kina really went to town on the garden and the giant green bouffant. It is a masterpiece. Note the echoed flower in the Xtina piece, which she also illustrated.

Kina and I both feel that we have collectively been sold a bill of goods regarding the shiftiness of crows and the corresponding necessity of scarecrows. She is, like many of us, not even confident that the scarecrows are scary. I reassured her that the crows are safe and seemingly unperturbed, but that daddies are deeply skeptical of our straw-stuffed friends. “Scaredaddies”, maybe, but leave our clever crow friends be.

Another garden! Mommy painted the bougainvillea here, and Kina painted all the gourds and the vast, clear sky. Thanks to Sloanie for the paint this week!

Only mommy likes the cold plunge, and she deserved hers last night while Kina and I had a little rigatoni date at home.

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It’s all sweet for this kid on Friday, as she prepares for the long weekend. May your weekends be half as squeezy.

Happy birthday, Kina’s grandma!

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Little kid who couldn’t get dropped off at school in her three-year-old class has come a long way. A real mentor, this one.

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Seems like every morning, that snuggle machine is broken again. I’ve had to buy several snuggle permits at considerable expense, and I wish I’d just bought the more reliable model in the first place. Serves me right.

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If I had one tenth the certainty about my life that this child has about her own, they would write articles in business magazines about my “ferocious determination”, which is exactly how I would describe Kina’s attitude about most everything she encounters. May she retain every ounce of that, and god grant me the strength to meet her.

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