“Mr. Ortiz says we’ve learned all the units,” said Kina recently, “and that the rest of the school year is just for fun!” This, completely failing to acknowledge that the entirety of the 2023-24 school year has been fun for Kina and her classmates—and not lacking for educational rigor, though I think I have never known a class to embark on quite as many field trips as this one did, and will, for the remainder of this very long and very fun school year.

dad

Whenever Laurea and I have a little getaway for the two of us, we are supposed to bring Kina back little gifts. Clothes, toys, candy, whatever. This time, we snuck into the walled garden of our hotel and snipped off one of the hundreds of blooming peonies, which we thought Kina would appreciate, given her propensity for stealing flowers.

Reader, she did not appreciate it. Flowers are too boring.

Candy next time.

It’s hard to understand sometimes that seven is “big”, but it is good from time to time to be reminded—especially when parents are out of town and the grandparents kick in.

dad

You haven’t seen the luxury until you’ve been in the seaweed room and reached up into the ceiling to get yourself a post-it note. Brilliance.

dad

Kina has not allowed us to smooch in her presence for several months, and we are suspicious of her motives for allowing it now, but we are taking advantage of the opportunity and are grateful to our leader.

dad

I cannot get over this statement. A+ madeleine moment, positively no notes.

dad

Yes, Kina, I ask that about myself all the time, and about you, too.

dad

It feels weird that the contemporary meaning of “politics” is what it is, when the original meaning is about the ways in which we make collective decisions and share power. Politicians today feel, in the abstract, so isolated and self-serving that it is easy to forget the many civil servants who are in fact out here trying to push and pull their way through the hard task of serving a community, a city, a nation, a world.

How do you provide for the sustenance and happiness of the people who live on your block and look like you without sacrificing the lives of the people who live in a faraway neighborhood? What does it mean to consider not just your own community but the ways in with your community is inextricably linked with those around you—even those that are seemingly very different from you?

I explained politicians to Kina in this way, possibly hoping that by naming it, I could make it so.

Okay a couple quick clarifications on this one from Kina:

1. “Why did you say ‘Talk Bluey?’ They’ll think that Bluey is a language! You have to say ‘Talk about Bluey’!”

2. “No, I only like to hear about things that hurt after they happen!”

I’m sorry, Kina. I’ve been coughing.

Reader, I decided I would be liked for two days, and I ended up having both to find Kina in one of her many nooks, and also to pretend to use Kina as ingredients for “chili lasagna”. It all took about half an hour, and I would like to point out that she already didn’t like me by this afternoon, when I told her I wouldn’t listen to one particular twee decade-old ballad in the car multiple times.

This has been hopefully the best news you hear about children today. I really hope the other news about children gets better.

dad

Kina sometimes wonders why we do not own a house, which is reasonable when you understand that she only a passing familiarity with money, real estate, and the notion of a million dollars. So, when passing a cute little pink house in Greenpoint the other day and asking what it might cost for us to move into it, she didn’t understand that 2.7 million dollars worth of real estate is not easily acquired by the average New Yorker on a whim.

Later that day, as we were walking through Brooklyn Bridge Park, she mused out loud that she would get rich just to buy us that house to live in together, and that she reckoned that, on a hot day, you could sell quite a lot of lemonade and slime. Far be it from me to disabuse her of the notion, as long as I can sit in the fabulous sun room out back.

The house entered contract later that evening. Maybe next time, Kina.

Kina is still firmly in her nook era, and her room is basically all blanket tunnels. None of this work is to code, but she keeps ignoring my summons.

dad

Reader, to be clear: she wore different pajamas to school than she wore to bed.

dad

Astute readers will recall that there was no field day last year, due to wildfires, so it’s no wonder that Kina rose early to have a special field day just for her class. Kudos to Mr Ortiz for going above and beyond. Yet again.

dad

Over the last four years of writing this newspaper, I have enjoyed every little opportunity I can get to use copywriting tricks like [square brackets] that clarify quotes. It just scratches that itch I always had from when I dreamt of being a real journalist, without all the drama and excessive smoking.

Okay, without all the smoking.

dad

I came home from work yesterday to find Kina engaged in an elaborate Kung Fu exhibition in our living room, having spent all of five minutes on stage with a local Kung Fu school. I’m not an expert in the form, but I would say that Kina has made considerable progress, given the extent of her training so far.

“They put me right in the middle,” she said proudly, “because I am Asian.”

Happy Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month from the girl you least want to sneak up on.

Kina knows that face painting is always the longest line, and so she shows up early. The bouncy castle, however, is forever. And ever. And ever.

Yesterday’s schoolyard festival was, as you might imagine, a fundraiser for Kina’s school budget—gutted, as I am obligated to remind you, by our city’s current administration. I thought of you all as I forked over cash for face painting and bouncy castles. This is all worth it.

If you have been thinking, “oh hey let me fix public education by reading The Daily Kina,” you still have a fighting chance at funding this month’s donation drive (currently at $15, which can buy around two reams of copier paper) by upgrading to a “premium subscription” at this button I just learned that you could put in an email:

I wrote about the NYC Dance Parade two years ago, when it was not raining. Last year, it rained, and we did not go. This year, it rained again, and we went. This year was the best year.

dad

p.s. The dream house plan reads as follows:

I guess it seemed like a promising opportunity, with Mommy and Daddy out for a date and a movie on the TV, but Kina is ultimately our daughter, and this family sleeps.

dad

She insists that the shiny coating on her ceramic cat is called “a white glue that turns clear”, and she insists so vehemently that I am questioning if this is even actually clay or some weird new, 21st-Century clay-adjacent material that got invented sometime in the four decades after that time I made my grandmother a Star Wars-themed landspeeder ashtray.

The glaze on that one, dear reader, was beige.

dad