Kina brings the holiday hits.

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Someday, she really won’t let me hold her hand anymore when we cross the street, and this is the issue of The Daily Kina I will point to in recognition of that moment.

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Today is the fourth birthday installment of The Daily Kina, and the seventh birthday installment of Kina. I was looking at pictures today of Kina from her birthday in 2020, when she was still so small and we were still so isolated. Among the pictures is a video of her doing her daily Zoom with her pre-Kindergarten classmates. She shows them her balloons and you can hear the voices of other children, tinny over the laptop speaker, talking about how shiny the balloons are. Her teacher asks everybody who is already four to put up four fingers. Kina looks calmly at the screen, because she is big now.

There was a lot of Zoom when Kina was four. Her birthday party, like everybody else’s, was conducted by video—balloons in the background, a kid’s singer appearing from in front of the fireplace in her house, cake with a candle, impatient children on their parents’ laps, not knowing any better because so few of them could remember any birthday at all that wasn’t conducted over Zoom.

It was a special birthday, because it felt like a moment of joy in the midst of a lonely year. We would celebrate Christmas alone that year—just the three of us, like we were the last people on earth. Kina’s birthday in 2020 felt like two adults welcoming a junior colleague into a secret society, a dose of adulthood and a slice of cake.

As the opening credits of The Boy and the Heron began, we realized we had made a huge mistake. Rather than purchasing tickets to the Christian-Bale-dubbed English language version of Hiyao Miyazaki’s most recent (and ostensibly final) film, we had inadvertently gotten ourselves seats at the Japanese language, subtitled version of the film.

In any context that did not involve a young child, I might have actually preferred this, but Kina is a new (if devoted) reader, and I got ready to pack up my things as I explained to Kina that she would need to read subtitles to understand the film.

Surprisingly, she was all in.

Lots of stuffing and laziness in this Saturday edition. Thank you, as always, Hannah, for everything.

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p.s. the stuffing is very good

You know how it is sometimes. Kina’s just looking out for me.

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A BFF for all situations.

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When I tell you that this is as excited as she gets about anything at all, you will understand how much she loves wearing shorts.

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The wait is nearly unbearable.

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Drop-off party for sixteen children, check. Elaborate goody bag ritual, check. Party horn shortage disaster averted, check. Vegan pizza, check. One week until seventh birthday. Start your engines.

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She called me out on not circling all the O’s and the dots on the lowercase I’s, but the joke’s on her, because there are no lowercase letters in The Daily Kina. Also, given that I spent all yesterday hauling her around the city looking for goody bag goods, she’s lucky there’s an edition today at all. This big girl has high standards and no shortage of gall.

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This girl loves pasta so much that she’d be willing to donate her finest examples of it to the church.

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At the end of the day, ancient weekday namers all agree: name the last day of the 21st century work week after the goddess.

Venus, Frigg, Diēs Veneris, Friday.

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Would you rather?

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Technically, it was “one whale, bending itself”, but I didn’t have space for that. Also, I should be clear that this apartment cannot hold one hundred dogs, let alone multiple elephants and the aforementioned whale. Would that it could.

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Kina has now agreed to set the table, make her bed, put away her own clothes, and occasionally sweep. Our team investigates how those promises are—or are not—fulfilled in the weeks ahead.

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‘Tis, as they say, the season.

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Kina long ago decided that “roasting” somebody should instead be “frying” them. We are home after a long week of frying. The beds are comfy but the family was fun.

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Sticks and stones can break my bones but moss and soil distract them.

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Here you see the giant single hopscotch square that Kina has drawn for her Yeh-yeh, after noting (and then desperately backpedaling out of having noted) his insufficient flexibility for the task at hand.

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