1. The newsroom has seen a lot of incoming questions from our private morning edition regarding our assertion that Kina ate fourteen actual lollipops. That number is an estimate, and we now expect the final count to come in far short of that—but it is still a ton.

2. The peanut butter cups were tasty. Kina is safe. A win-win situation, really.

dad

If only the world knew that every day in Kina’s life is Halloween.

dad

There are some times of day in which it still feels like Kina is a baby. Those times, which do not include the many hours of scolding and sassy gossip we exchange with her, the bits where she eats great quantities of food at dinner, or the walks to school, are growing fewer and farther between. One of the last remaining such rituals is bathtime.

We first bathed Kina about a week after coming back from the hospital, even though she still had the floral baby smell thing going for her. She was a temperamental infant, which had us assuming the worst about this first bath. We watched four YouTube videos about bathing infants, filled a basin with warm water, and braced ourselves.

When do they teach you in school that your heart is located squarely on the left side of your chest? Why do I have no heartbeat?

dad

Really, though, Mommy should pace herself.

dad

Sorry so late. It all washes out in time.

dad

“Give me a task,” she says. Who are we to refuse?

dad

In almost six years, we have not needed an alarm clock. Until today. Just made it to school, and alarm set for tomorrow.

dad

On a rainy day, there is little better to do in New York than go to the Metropolitan Museum of Art and wander around aimlessly. This, of course, is easier done when you are alone (highly recommended) or in a party made up entirely of adults. It is a considerably greater toss-up when you have a child in tow.

We have attempted the rainy-day Met visit in the past—twice, at least, and before the advent of masking and lockdowns. It did not go well. There is little to recommend in the Met for a child who can barely express herself in full sentences and who can find as much joy in a cardboard box as she can in carved marble. There was crying.

Yesterday, as I was doing nothing more than literally standing around at an outdoor street fair / fundraiser for a local elementary school, being brushed about by children running to or from a bouncy castle and screaming at each other, I reflected on how much less stressful it had been to be in the actual emergency room, missing two teeth and bleeding from my face, than it was to be in the midst of five hundred parents and their children in a line for face painting.

A retreat to the adjacent playground with Kina and her friend Runa was, by comparison, a visit to the spa. There, at least, I could sit while Kina and Runa ran around endlessly, pretending to leave the parents in the corner of the playground as they sought out “some Rosé”. The actual parents had no rosé, but at least they had a seat and six square feet of personal space.

I don’t remember what it was like to be almost six and in a crowd. I wish I could at least recall what it was like to have as much energy as Kina has. When I think about it really hard, I can feel my legs just moving, limited only by the coordination of my muscles, unbothered by the hard ground. Notably, I do not recall being tired at that age.

Daddy, in turn, rejects the notion that his face is “very scratchy” and suggests that maybe Kina’s cheeks are too soft and sensitive.

dad

I know this is funny, but if you haven’t seen her pull on an actual imaginary rope, you don’t know just how tragically gifted our young mime really is.

dad

Trust me—I never pass up an opportunity to snuggle with my stuffie child when the air outside is crisp and the fuzzy sweatshirt is so cozy.

dad

Maybe someday she’ll change her mind about the moon and the virtues of lunar solitude, but for my part, I will still miss her enough for both of us.

dad

Kina just can’t shake her love for her kindergarten teacher, whom she hugs daily in the lunchroom and dreams of every night.

dad

I don’t want to make our sound like Kina spent the entire walkathon browsing through used dresses to find a pristine Belle costume complete with built in petticoat, but I also don’t want to make it sound like she did much walking—or even scooting. She earned her donors’ money; that’s all I will say here.

dad

Sometimes, it’s very calming to just take a tiny pumpkin in your hands and feel what it’s like to hold one. These are things our children know.

It’s not like Kina is an easygoing boss on most days, but on Parade days, she’s a real tyrant. I cannot tell you how many pieces of construction paper (Blick’s Premium is the best, if you’re ever in the market for it) we went through in service of making this rainbow. Let’s just say that I had a very efficient idea, and that our art director rejected the approach out of hand. Kina ran us ragged, but the result is inarguably worth the pain.

Today, after Laurea and Kina headed off to gymnastics, I went back to trim the binding perforations off of some early The Daily Kina editions (so I can pack more in the boxes, and also because it was lazy of me ever not to have trimmed them, so I pay my trimming taxes during gymnastics now).

One of the headlines I found is among my favorites of all time: “If We Make Steak the Smoke Will Set Off the Smoke Detector and It Will Go Out and Fill Up the Neighborhood and We’re Gonna Get In Trouble and We Will Have To Move Somewhere Else Where There’s No Steak”. It is from November 14, 2020, and Kina was still three years old.

I remember the car seat manual, in November of 2020, saying that the seat should be used until the child is both over forty inches tall and forty pounds in weight, which is how I know that Kina was both smaller and lighter than that at the time I wrote this edition. She was too heavy to carry for blocks at a time, but I routinely put her up on my shoulders and paraded her all over the city without giving it a single thought.

Listen, all I know is this: Lala claims that Kina threw a tantrum when it was suggested that they would eat lunch at St. Anselm, compelling them instead to eat at Gertie, where all were satisfied by the matzoh ball soup. This morning, though, when questioned about that narrative, Kina looked quizzical and responded, “No, we went to St. Anselm and all the cookers were having lunch and Lala tried to open the door and a man in the ground under the metal things said, ‘Lady, they’re eating’ and so we went to Gertie instead.”

Where does the truth of the matter lie? Tune in next week. I’m jetlagged.

dad

Mommy, as always, a pleasant surprise.

dad