After months of trying to convince Kina to let her father participate in nightly bath and bedtime rituals, I came up with the brilliant idea to impersonate the only person in Kina’s life whom she unconditionally idolizes—her stylist, Christina. Now, for nearly a week, she has demanded baths “from Christina”, to have her hair brushed “by Christina”, and to brush her teeth “with Christina”.

There is no meaningful transformation involved in this charade—I mostly speak in a considerate and quiet voice, asking Kina loads of probing questions about her family and classmates. The effect is as calming for me as it is for her, and baths have gone on without a hitch for both of us.

While I am pleased with the improvement this has made in the balance of my parenting responsibilities with Laurea, it has had an even more appreciable effect on the gossip I get from my child, because as everybody knows, you tell all your best secrets to your stylist.

Just so you know, my lasagna is unstoppable.

dad

I don’t know what we won, but this girl is taking a bath no matter what.

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I cannot muster the energy to tilt at the windmills of stalled climate mediation and the idea that my daughter thinks it’s reasonable for it to be in the 40s in early February, having never really known anything else, and so I will point out that she was more bothered this morning by the realization that my illustrations of triangle and rectangle people in this newspaper never have noses. Some emergencies are as plain as the nose on your face, as it turns out.

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We have entered the beautiful phase of Kina’s sartorial self-sufficiency in which we can walk away for twenty minutes and return to find her fully dressed in something other than an Elsa costume. Yesterday’s fit was so crispy, and her vibe so moody, that I couldn’t figure out how to catch it in washable markers—so you are all now witness to the first actual photo in an edition of The Daily Kina.

A landmark day for fashion journalism!

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We seem to have miscalculated the date on which the streets of Manhattan’s Chinatown teem with lions, all trailed by drummers as they threaten local business owners and bat their eyelids coquettishly in celebration of Lunar New Year. We had hoped to catch a glimpse of some of these lions at a distance yesterday, and Kina invited her friends Futura and Spencer, each of whom had built up their expectations for over a week and were wound tightly as we arrived on Mott Street, where we bought confetti cannons and prepared for the hunt.

Alas, it was cold and also the wrong day. One crew of lions had visited a few businesses in East Chinatown earlier in the day, and when we spotted their furry heads and the young dancers who wear them as they walked briskly towards their cars, we asked if any lions remained in the wild. They offered that while it was too cold to dance, the next weekend would probably be a better day for lions. Children wept.

Having spent our confetti cannons and missed the lions, then, we all decamped to get some ice cream and buy tiger-themed decorations for our doors, which lifted spirits considerably. I gave all the kids red envelopes to fund their new year endeavors and promised to let them know if I spotted any big cats.

I am now so used to taking Kina to the testing facility to find out that whatever random one-day virus she’s caught is not Covid that it has become our little start-of-the-month game. March out into the rain and get your nose swabbed—it’s February.

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In which our protagonists go for a walk in the rain for yet another Covid test that is once again negative, and Daddy has to carry the little frog umbrella because Kina wants the rainbow one. Random FedEx driver was amused.

Not pictured: Daddy carrying Kina on shoulders most of the way because “this umbrella is too heavy.”

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This morning, I asked Kina if she remembered a little food hall in our neighborhood. We used to go there to eat pierogies and play skee-ball when she was just old enough to eat pierogies and still too young to play skee-ball. There was a chalkboard wall that Kina would scribble on while we finished our food, and one of her favorite singalong artists would play there from time to time. It was a crowded little indoor space that was a perfect winter dinner refuge, back when you could find effortless refuge.

That food hall closed sometime in the last two years, one stall at a time and then all at once. I hadn’t set foot in there since a couple months before the pandemic, in the same way that I hadn’t set foot in most New York City restaurants in the months before the pandemic; I didn’t think to.

I have a video of Kina on my phone, in fact, from the last time I went to that food hall—on Halloween in 2019 . She and her friend Niki are sitting on a decorative bale of hay at the entrance of the food hall eating some of their hard-won candy. Kina is dressed as a witch and making a face as she realizes that the lollipop she’s just licked is a pickle lollipop. “It’s soury,” she says. She is not even three years old yet.

Have I told you the story of how my mother, in a parent-teacher conference, heard that I was not eating my cafeteria lunch at school, and how she took it upon herself to cater to my picky-eater nonsense by sending me to school with a thermos full of hot ravioli or macaroni and cheese every day for at least four years (I honestly cannot remember), which affirmed my disgust reflex for countless foods—cold sandwiches, salads, cole slaw, vinegar, pickles, unmelted cheese, and all condiments among them—for the next thirty years of my life? I am endlessly grateful to her for those lunches, but Kina is going to eat the cafeteria food, I’m sorry.

She can have the yogurt raisins, though. Fair trade.

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The Daily Kina wishes you a very happy Lunar New Year and the strength of conviction to shake your own destiny.

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You would think that sledding would be an unremitting thrill for a five year old, and you would be right, in the sense that many things are thrilling, and that different sorts of thrills have differing reasonable limits. For Kina, it seems we can do about ten consecutive minutes of sledding before she melts down and we have to find another hill, where she finds a second—and then a third, fourth, fifth, and sixth—wind, sliding gleefully down the crowded slopes of East 79th Street, aimed directly at her daddy’s blueberry jacket to take. him. down. Next time it snows, I dare you to stand in her way. I dare you to the Dark Ages.

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p.s. Here is the story of Kina’s favorite soup, whose name is Roberto.

I am not sure if you’ve ever wondered whether it would be better to have fresh snow rubbed directly into your eyes for half an hour or be stuck in an apartment with a kindergartner for five hours, but I bet the answer would surprise you!

This is the second outline of a butterfly that Laurea painted for Kina to complete today. Kina might say that this is the first of the outlines, since Mommy accidentally embellished the wings on the first one, absolutely ruining the Parade just minutes after the work had begun. All is well, dear reader! Our newly-unadorned butterfly, with her asymmetrical harlequin wings, has found her flower. Which, of these two, is Kina? Which is Mommy?

Family nearly stuck in house for entire day, until kid realizes she can torment father in five inches of fresh snow.

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It was hard enough getting her to brush her teeth at night, so we figured we might as well double our stress by adding a second cleaning in the morning. Whose kindergartners are out there doing this willingly? These teeth are falling out anyhow!

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It wasn’t that long ago, really, that Kina was sounding out the word DOG, which I totally freaked out over. She’s come a long way, and as an avid reader, I’m still freaking out, I suppose.

I started putting the Young Reader’s Section at the bottom of the page back in May, mostly because I was tired of coming up with four headlines every day—but also because Kina had been asking me for months what I was writing about, and it felt only fair that I give her a word or three of her own to read every day.

For a long time, she would get frustrated when she couldn’t figure out how to read the word of the day, and so I really leaned into the drawings in that section, but she eventually got the hang of sounding out the syllables, and we would have a little dance party by the table in the living room whenever she figured out the day’s puzzle.

Even at my best, I am still no ice princess.

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Kina was the cleaner yesterday, but she aspires one day to be the bin thermometer. A girl can dream.

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I wish I had it in me to write a big long thing about eternity and the imponderables that emerge from small children’s minds, but I’m exhausted and honestly still can’t get my head around “when space came alive”, because infinity freaks me out, so you’ll have to wait for another newsletter for that one.

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How lucky we have all been to have Kina’s Ya-Ya and Gramma1 around for the last month, as we collectively awaited the arrival of little Otis. While the new cousin has consumed his proper share of familial attention, Kina had a wonderful time, for her part, too:

• Christmas Eve dinner at Gramma and Ya-Ya’s hotel/house

• The lights in the Brooklyn Botanic Garden

• Countless games of hide and seek

• A extensive exploration of the knock-knock joke form

• Gramma’s popsicles

• Gramma’s cherries

• Gramma’s skillful manner of getting Kina to answer questions about school

• Throwing toy airplanes on the playground

• Luxury steak

• The smiles of her doting grandparents, who now have all of Kina and a new baby to absorb

Lucky them. Lucky us.