In the last week, Kina’s favorite new sentence construction has been, “How would you feel if I [did what you are currently doing?]”. She always says this with an air of patient superiority, as if she’s been waiting to teach me a lesson about my behavior for years—which, in some cases, is probably true. The suggestion of empathy as a corrective tool is novel, but it’s hard sometimes to imagine what it must be like to be roughly six years old.

It is clearly overwhelming sometimes, and focus and respect are hard to come by. People are interrupting you constantly and not helping you in the ways that you expect (or need) to be helped. Weekends end too soon, and tasks leak into the joyful spaces that you’ve set aside for yourself. The fear and anxiety of the people around you can be hard to manage, and this hardly seems like something they, as adults, should be putting on you, but they’ve come to depend on you for comfort and approval—which is strange, since you are a child. You desperately want to be getting better and growing up, but it all goes so slowly. Nobody orders the right potatoes.

I guess I’d never thought of it that way before.

We took Kina to my Uncle Chris’ funeral yesterday, figuring she was old enough to reason with what was going on, and assuming that a kid her age both could and should be able to see others grieve.

Kina had met Chris only one time that she could remember—at my cousin Matt’s wedding, after Chris had already grown relatively frail. Still, I was pleased to see how entertained he was by Kina, both of them funny and sharp; they were good for each other, and they got along swimmingly.

I had assumed the service—in a Brooklyn church that Chris and my Aunt Mary have attended for the last several years—would be closed-casket, but it wasn’t, and so Kina and I found ourselves a few rows from Uncle Chris, and she struggled occasionally to get on her tiptoes so she could see his face, to no avail.

First field trip proves grand success. Erstwhile abstract artist vindicated, arranges show of early Parade issues to capitalize on newfound interest in squiggles.

dad

THE DAY HAS FINALLY COME.

dad

There is some serious The Publisher’s Mother energy in how Kina is rallying all the girls in first grade to confront one boy who made one girl cry and said sorry but not exactly what he was sorry for.

I’m proud of her.

dad

First, it became important to leave the kitchen light on—not just gently, but at full blast, with her bedroom door open.

Then we dimmed the lights in the living room overnight and accidentally left the smart bulb in our entryway at a setting that looked vaguely lavender, which freaked her out.

Then we left the lights bright in the living room, which she also hated.

The box says “6 ICE CREAM SANDWICHES”.

Hannah and Kina each ate one (1) ice cream sandwich, as a treat, on Friday evening.

Laurea offered Kina one (1) ice cream sandwich yesterday evening.

SOMEHOW SHE ALWAYS WINS

DAD

Kina has Knuffle Bunny home from school for the long weekend, and the powers that be at school have asked for thorough documentation. Kina’s working on her own notebook of K.B.’s time in the sun this weekend, but I printed out extra pictures of our day out yesterday gathering leaves and running around a maze and doing gymnastics and visiting our local dry cleaner, so that I could put together this rare photographic edition for all of you. The picture of Kina and K.B. sitting on the boob lady beanbag is not going in the first grade notebook; that’s exclusive.

I wasn’t sure what to make of today’s Parade as it was coming together, but it’s got a real cubist paste unicorn thing going on, now that I see it in the light of day. She’s really into drawing braids these days. And unicorns. Always unicorns.

Kina has been making me watch clips of Supernanny—a reality show trafficking in relatively real-talk notions of parental discipline, doled out by the eponymous super nanny, with whom Kina is straight-up fascinated.

To her detriment, as it seems—as I, Kina’s Daddy, have begun to internalize Jo Frost’s advice and set productive boundaries for Kina and myself, all of which leads to somewhat less candy and television.

dad

To be very clear, the tattoo artist was Kina, and the ink is water soluble. She did press really hard, though, so it felt honest.

dad

I just want to say, as somebody who draws every morning, that this song is a brilliant recipe for a drawing of a pig. Thank you to Ms. Hart, from whom I picked up Knuffle Bunny after school today—and who apparently learned this song in grad school—for teaching it to my newly-avid pig portraitist.

[sung to the tune of “one little, two little, three little fingers”]

Little circle, little circle, biiiiig circle [draw pig’s nose]
Little circle, little circle, biiiiig circle [draw rest of pig’s face]
Triangle, triangle, biiiiig circle [draw pig’s ears and giant body]
W! W! [draw pig’s feet]
e-e-e! [squiggle pig’s tail]

Apparently you have to give Knuffle Bunny a bath before he goes back to school, which, let’s face it, is probably universally good advice, bunny or not.

dad

This is the second election cycle of The Daily Kina, and I wish it were significantly less consequential than the last election edition, but it is not, and here we are. Because all headlines in this newspaper are in all caps, the reader is often left to establish whether or not any given headline is an urgent headline, but you can turn to the subject line of evening newsletter to learn the truth and learn that today, in fact, is urgent.

If you receive this newsletter and the polls are still open and you have not, in fact, voted—

PLEASE VOTE.

I just think she doesn’t understand why running down Bedford and sweating is worth the investment.

dad

I have been to many art openings in studio buildings in my day, and I can confidently assert that there is not much difference between an opening party with no children at 11pm and an opening party with mostly children at 3:45pm. Damage is almost assured.

Today’s Parade is almost shockingly new in style. Pastels were squooshed. It is gorgeous.

I have told the story of our meet-cute before, a decade ago, in celebration of our tenth year together. The relevant bit here is that I remember thinking how firm Laurea’s handshake was, and that we ended up having Kina, who now plays out that moment whenever she thinks of it. Wild.

Firm handshake Laurea circa 2002 would be absolutely appalled.

dad

The truth is, I never told her there were no bedbugs in New York. She can arrive at that conclusion on her own.

dad

p.s. On further investigation, I learned that “Little Baby Klepto” is a line from Centaurworld—one of our shared favorite shows. She is, to the best of my knowledge, not an actual infant kleptomaniac.

I guess what happened—and the narrative here is unclear—is that yesterday, in the schoolyard, there were parents of an unknown Kina who were recognized by some teacher or another. Somehow, this (our) Kina became aware of that teacher having recognized the parents of the other Kina—who is, apparently, in second grade at the very same school she currently attends. It is only possible that our Kina would know this because the aforementioned teacher had told her directly that the other Kina was in second grade, that being a fact which no other human being (the other Kina’s parents included) could plausibly have disclosed. This defies all probability, because Kina’s name is so vanishingly rare—a feature that her mother more or less demanded when we were thinking of names1—that she appears to share it only with the singer Kina Grannis (after whom we did not name Kina) and a nineteenth-century Bulgarian suffragist (after whom we sort of did2). The likelihood that there would be another Kina in the grade immediately above her, and that nobody had thought in three years to mention how strange it was that there were two Kinas in adjacent class years is hilariously distant3, yet tantalizing.

I do not intend to ask whether or not there is actually a second grader named Kina, because I like the idea that there is exactly one Kina enrolled each year at the school around the corner, living just out of view and being an absolute charmer in ways that everybody keeps as their own precious secret.

dad

Sorry bro.

dad