Conks out on couch with fever while Daddy works next to her. She then watches Castle in the Sky, drinks juice, feels better.
I mean, there wasn't exactly a lot of snow to begin with, and she seemed happy enough to sleep. Ten hour fever and we were out of the woods. Happy (retroactive) Valentine's Day!
Daddy and Kina work together to produce twenty cards for her classmates; in hindsight, she regrets the custom notes
I told her twenty custom messages would be a lot, but I am also the guy who busted out the hot glue gun and metallic ink for the stamped letters, so I’m not quite sure who’s walking the walk here.
It’s basically a basketball field in the shape of a bowl, but red and also a little bit green,” says kid as she describes biggest sporting event in U.S.
It is bowl time. Get the foam fingers and bowl-ball bats out of the closet.
attention-starved scientists shocked to discover that structure works
I don’t know why I was so surprised that letting Kina put her own to-do list together every night would make chores work. It’s just foreign to me. Glad she’s figuring this out now.
“It’s just first grade and second grade mixed together,” notes second-grader trying out third grade math
I think it is a little ironic that Kina’s internal arithmetic model for third grade just yields a slightly-diluted second grade. What she would like you to take away, though, is that she is very advanced in many ways. And she is.
after a long week, family takes an easy Sunday of play and relaxation; Kina reflects fondly on our relationship
I guess it was a long week, no? Kina had a lot of strife and turmoil to deal with, and I think we all deserved a good Sunday together. I took her to her original baby swings at Rodney Playground, we all had a fancy lunch and washed it down with cupcakes, watched a movie at home (well, Kina did while we slept), and we ate picadillo and had some fun conversations. All told, it was sort of our gift to Kina after a short series of moments that were not, strictly speaking, fun for her.
In exchange, later in the evening, she vanished into her bedroom and produced two ornamental shells. On mine, she wrote “I love you, Daddy” and painted hearts in every heart-shaped divot. On Laurea’s, she wrote “LISTEN TO CHILL OUT”. Both were perfectly crafted to remind us how wonderfully special this kid is.
It’s an honor to have her as a boss, a roommate, and a kid. Unlike pasta, she is absolutely perfect.
Laurea’s astronaut ambitions stifled by child who is perfectly satisfied by Earth; “I don’t want you to get lost out there,” she says
One of Laurea’s most endearing qualities is her certainty that, someday, she will go to space. I have had many years to become accustomed to this plan, but Kina only learned about it yesterday, and let me tell you, she does not find this endearing.
Space is a very large destination, full of nothingness and devoid of cell-phone towers, so it’s a little tricky to pin down where basically anything up there is at any given time, if you are seven.
This difficulty in geolocation (when one has basically left the geo), coupled with a slight resurgence in separation anxiety, has led Kina to her recent ruling that no mommies shall go to space, no how. It’s just too hard to find your way home, and home is the most important thing to Kina right now.
Digit gets dinged on door in the hallway at school; Mommy is summoned; X-ray shows tiny fracture in tip of finger; she eats dumplings
Not a stellar day yesterday, but we are all okay. Kina was being helpful and holding the door open for some classmates, and then the door was closing and then it was closed, and a parent was running over to her.
Laurea texted me at work in the middle of a meeting to say she was taking Kina to the urgent care, which all went well for them but not as well for the daddy stuck at work and wondering how the kid’s finger was. But the finger is fundamentally fine, if a bit purple, and it is splinted and Kina is comfortable enough to have since attended a birthday party, a tasty brunch, and three hours at the New York Hall of Science. All good.
kid forced to wear school uniform for photographic proof of her scholarship; Kina is allowed to hold the sign
A slightly lighter topic today, though no less fraught for our publisher, who knows full well the importance of a school photo and the power of a well-selected outfit—a selection she was denied in the face of green/beige homogeneity. We must all suffer indignities from time to time.
Parents later explain the importance of apologies, promise to do better, and everybody gets a hug
It’s surprising how little I’ve heard from other parents about whether or not they fight in front of their kids. I suppose it is the sort of topic that we’re afraid might invite judgement (a fear I shared even as I wrote the headline on today’s paper), but conflict is such a significant part of sharing a life together that I’m curious why the topic doesn’t come up more often.
Laurea and I had an argument yesterday in Kina’s presence—something we prefer to avoid—and it ended with me shouting as we walked out the front door of our building, which I am not proud of. Kina, judging by her demeanor and plugged-up ears, wasn’t proud either. Recognizing that things had gotten too noisy, we cut our losses, and I took Kina to school in silence as Laurea made her way back upstairs.
Kina didn’t know this at the time, but I ran home right after dropping her off so that I could catch Laurea before she went to work. We had a calm and clear conversation about what we wished had gone differently, apologized for our parts in the argument, and pivoted to talking about how we would address this with Kina.
Kina’s memory of spilled ice cream draws a blank in the over-40 set
I would not have started writing this newspaper if I didn't care about remembering the various little things that happen to Kina every day. Despite that effort, Kina has started to be able to recall more minor dramas from her youth than we find ourselves able to remember. Whether, as in the case of the fallen fish-shaped ice cream cone, these are events that actually happened or are mere constructions of her mind, it feels at times as though things are slipping away from us—not least of those things being Kina’s childhood. I think this process of writing and drawing gives me some sense of control over that distance of memory, but it’s insufficient. I never thought, in 2020, that the real repository of stories from Kina’s childhood would be Kina herself, but as her brain develops and the stories add up, I’m surprised (though I should not be) that she has her own take on her life: which moments startled her, which of them dug deep, which felt pivotal or silly or sad.
The stories I remember from Kina’s day now include her own, sometimes from years ago, and I feel lucky to be able to write down the moments that I truly did once forget, having been reintroduced to them by the person who was there in the first place.
city inspector banned from room after filing violation
As the inspection report shows, the only thing keeping this swing from collapsing is two small, tight knots wedged between the bedframe and the shelf hanging from its side. Any reasonable assessor would smack a stop-work order all over this.
