Late dispatch about the chaos babies at the block party.

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Sometimes I wonder how many times I can write about Kina not wanting us to speak, and then she finds an entirely new way to shut us up and I’m like “history needs this quote”. Eventually I will take Kina’s long-demanded vow of silence, and all of this will make a lot more sense.

Kina came up with the concept of “DOT BOOKE” this morning, and the thesis was so promising: just a bit page full of dots. Suffice it to say, angels and flowers are inevitable when it comes to Parade.

Kina’s really catching up on the snuggles now that Laurea is back. Also, hard to explain the bag of body waste joke; you’ll just have to watch it.

dad

Like all of us, Kina’s never seen a deal she couldn’t still make better.

dad

I do value the training of our city’s public school teachers, but I think everybody involved is wondering why we don’t do it on consecutive days. I have no further comment here.

dad

I met Laurea for the first time more or less exactly twenty years ago, which I wrote about more or less exactly ten years ago, which was about four and a half years before Kina was born, which is to say that everything is a whole lot different this time around.

To set the context for the uninformed: Laurea was visiting New York on June 8th, 2002, not thinking particularly of spending the rest of the summer here, or with me, let alone for the next two decades of her life. You can read the post linked above for a brief play-by-play of the ensuing decade, but I want to reflect here for a little bit on the happy accident of somebody I almost randomly encountered twenty years ago now sharing with me a child, a home, and a considerable portion of her taste in music.

I could have stayed at home that night, but I didn’t. I don’t know what happens to me in the alternate universe in which I do stay home, but I’ve never dwelled on that universe with any real curiosity. I do not want to contemplate that universe any more that I like to contemplate the ones where I am not born, or where cheeseburgers do not exist, or where I never get the apartment I have lived in also for the last twenty years.

Kina’s recent pernicious sleep problems haven’t prompted the same despair in me and in Laurea as her last several regressions, mostly because:

1. We know that this will pass.

2. Every sleep regression comes with some sort of developmental surprise.

In this case, for the first time, Kina has been able to articulate that the sleep regression is about the developmental surprise—and that the leaps taken by her brain at the moment are rocking the nighttime boat. Something unexplainable is happening inside that little noggin, and it’s been a huge pain in the ass for all involved. In the last three weeks, Kina has emerged from her bedroom in tears, complaining about various combinations of the following:

Yesterday, after a “sooo good” lunch of Phở and a spin on the carousel as a family in DUMBO, Laurea headed off to meet a friend and left us sitting in the shade by the waterfront. Kina watched the ferries pass in the distance and waves roll off in their wake. As the waves funneled into the inlet by the carousel, they broke against the boulders with surprising force, splashing various couples taking their engagement photos and groups of kids scampering along the shore. Kina rested her elbows on my shoulders and muttered “here’s a good one” whenever she spotted a particularly promising swell. Once, two ferries and a huge barge passed simultaneously underneath the Manhattan Bridge; Kina and I waited with eager anticipation as the waves snuck in across each other and slammed into the rocks, drenching several tourists taking selfies.

We sat there for longer than I would have expected her to want to stay, just taking pleasure in the boats, the water, and the comedy. It was the highlight of our day.

dad

As the old man in a bar in the opening scenes of a horror movie might say, we don’t get visitors around here much these days. In light of that, the fact that Kina got to meet two sets of friends from far away (counting Chicago as “far” and Hong Kong as “farther”) this weekend was an enormous treat for her—and hopefully for all of them. Half of these guests had never met Kina before, so they got the full five years all at once. They brought her fancy candy, though, so they got the good five years.

Today’s Parade theme is “colors”, but a key player in today’s still life is a bushel of peaches dyed in indigo. As one does.

I don’t know if Kina is truly aware of the “grand scheme of things”, as we understand it, but she is at least accidentally right that the few small indiscretions and indulgences of her daily life don’t add up to much when you hold them up against everything else that is going on in the world these days—let alone the inconceivable vastness of time and the known universe. Hard to say which of those things is more brutal, but a popsicle is an easy win by comparison.

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I have no idea what it means to be playtime monitor, but Kina is proud.

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We would all be better off if we greeted each other by name and acknowledged the day of the week, is all I am saying.

But I am also saying that my mango today is astonishing.

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We are all a little sleepy today. Tomorrow is another day.

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Yes, we are in New York yet.

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Allow me this moment to feel pride in my brilliant child and her novel puzzle technique (no edges).

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Various combinations of parents, grandparents, and uncle spent the day entertaining Kina yesterday: traipsing from playground (ooo rocks) to playground (too challenging) to kiddie train (enchanting) to inflatable pool (cold!)

She was grateful and fun and energetic—a blessing for the end of this prior week, and a gift for her grandparents. Grandma got a little motion sick riding backwards on the train, but it appears to have been worth it.

By the time this issue was produced, Kina was finally, at long last, indisputably in Virginia.

dad

We went to Kina’s school art show yesterday and managed to find her art tacked up in a little corner of the gymnasium among the other kindergartners’ works on paper. It was strangely—maybe not strangely—moving.

Kina’s favorite thing from the show? “The pastries.”

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Just bringing you Kina’s view of the world for today, including some of her original art that inspired this morning’s admittedly escapist edition. This is why.

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p.s. In the lower cartoon, I am saying “I need to poo but I want to watch TV,” and Laurea is confused. Thought you’d want to know that.

I forgot to send this yesterday, for reasons probably obvious to every parent who subscribes to this publication. I will not belabor the point; I did not expect to be grateful to have Kina home sick from school in 2022, but here we are.

dad