The publisher thinks I am covering the tall-girl beat a little too thoroughly.

dad

Kina had a birthday party! The venue was spinny and the children were kind. We are all thoroughly exhausted, but Kina is happy, and at least she is asleep. Happy fifth, kid, and many returns of the day.

For Kina’s birthday, Laurea let her choose a single sticker from the Very Nice Sticker Book That Only Mommy Gets To Use, which is why you see a beautiful vase on today’s edition. There is also a unicorn.

I wrote about Kina’s fourth birthday last December 11th, and it is one of my favorite newsletters from the last year.1 Not thinking that I would ever write another birthday newsletter, I went deep on the history of Kina’s birthdays and waxed nostalgic. If you want waxy things, go back and read that. This year is about last year, and about knowing what’s going on.

When Kina turned four, it happened on Zoom. We invited one of her favorite singalong people. Adults’ faces and kids’ faces were the same size, each in their own proper rectangles. Kina didn’t seem to understand what was going on. Strangely, the thing I most recall is that we had entirely too much cake (because there were only three of us to eat it).

Kina turns five tomorrow, which means she is now, by her definition, officially old.

She knows I am already old, because I talk about it all the time, and she seldom misses an opportunity to remind me of it.

I am, of course, still relatively young as a human being, I tell myself. Kina is, by extension, comically not old.

Don’t bring a rock to the nose fight.

dad

The irony of Kina throwing away a paper tracking how patient she has become (because I didn’t give her a snack exactly when she asked for it) is entirely lost on her, which is regrettable. Fortunately, I’ve captured it for posterity! Hello, adult Kina!

dad

Here are the mnemonic number chants Kina has taught me so far:

“Draw a hook, give it a shoe! That’s the way we make a two!”

“Backwards C, backwards C! That’s the way we make a three!”

The tradition of hanging a coronavirus ornament on our Christmas tree is as old as our tradition of having a Christmas tree at all, which is exactly one year. The ornament reads “2020”, which now feels wildly nostalgic and naïve, but it is also somewhat festive, which is all that matters.

dad

Yesterday, we talked to Kina about how she might want to think about giving toys to kids who would not otherwise get Christmas gifts of their own. Kina, who is still very young and therefore moderately self-interested, expressed some skepticism. Instead, she offered as a compromise, she would give presents to friends, family, and classmates. I tried several routes in with her to explore the notion of random acts of generosity—a kid on the playground or at the library, or a girl with the same name as her. No dice.

I had never really explained the concept of generosity to Kina before (there are so many social concepts!) but somebody else must have, because this is what she said when I asked her about it:

“Generous is when you’re nice to someone who is anxious, nervous, or sad.”

Mommy is back, and she’s fulfilling all of Kina’s many wishes. Nobody in this house has any complaints at all.

dad

Hed and dek say it all. She’s fine. She had ice cream. We’re good!

dad

Kina has, in the last week or so, spontaneously decided to attempt spelling her own words—in most cases in a nearly incomprehensible fashion, but admirable for the effort, nonetheless. (GRDY is Gertie, the cat of my young adulthood, who died when Kina was still very small.)

The card she drew today for her mother is now hung with gaffer’s tape at the foot of our bed. Kina wanted Laurea to see it when she was getting ready in the morning.

There are no pictures on the page, for a change. Kina’s a spelling girl now, living that writer’s life. Enjoy it now, child, before the editors come for you!

Yesterday, when she came home, Kina marched up to me and confidently informed me that she was this week’s star student. This is an enormous deal.

She has been talking about the concept of a “star student” since the beginning of the year. It is an award that Kina speaks of in hushed tones. Odin has been star student, and Georgia, and Dean. She tells us these things as though they are the product of major national elections.

They are not, of course. It appears to be a process of random selection (because this is kindergarten), but I am no less proud of her for this. For her part, Kina was clearly over the moon about the surprise. The life of a five year old is punctuated by moments of random personal recognition—run-ins with friends, games of duck-duck-goose, nominations to star studenthood. I miss that kind of joy.

Last night, when Laurea called us from California to say good night, Kina explained patiently how her day had gone, told her mother that she loved her, and then immediately offered to “make her a card”.

Making cards for people has been Kina’s recent preferred expression of love and gratitude. She asks for the subject’s favorite color, pulls out her glittery markers and her notebook (a smaller version of the notebook that I use to draw these morning newspapers), and produces a signed portrait—often after asking me to spell HAPPY BIRTHDAY or THANK YOU.

She has given cards to random people who take her on paddleboards (bottom right, November 27 of this year), family, friends both near and far, and literally anybody who has a birthday. The cards sometimes have art on both sides, are usually delivered flat (not folded), and take between twenty seconds and twenty minutes to produce.

It turns out that flying solo with a five year old—even in the midst of a pandemic, on the Sunday after Thanksgiving, with fairly rumbly turbulence, and arriving home late—is a dream compared to flying solo with the same child at the age of three. Not sure I could have handled this trip two years ago, but Kina and I are both older, wiser, and more patient with each other than we used to be. It also helps that she is a lot calmer with either of us alone than with both of us together; the impact of any minor inconvenience she suffered yesterday went no further than a scrunched-up brow or a brisk shake of the head. She made no enemies on this airplane.

Despite the fact that we did not experience an exciting emergency water landing, Kina was pleased with the whole affair and thanked the pilot as we disembarked. We are both exhausted and jet-lagged tonight, but my pride in the kid is solace enough. A+ flying kid experience, would travel again.

dad

Hello from the plane in which Kina and I are rocketing back home to New York! Kina’s mother is on her way to her first work trip in two years, which means I get to enjoy a little Daddy-Daughter time with the kiddo, whose tolerance of airplanes is significantly higher than when we last flew. It’s an actual sincere joy.

We drew today’s Sunday edition on our standard weekday 9"x12" paper stock, because I can’t imagine trying to produce an edition on construction paper when my knees barely fit behind the seat in front of me. We make sacrifices.

When I was a bit younger than Kina, my parents took me to Disney World; it’s one of my earliest fragments of memory, and I wrote a little bit about that visit back in August of this year—specifically about my father waiting in line for the Dumbo ride on my behalf in the hot Florida sun for what seemed, to him, like hours. I am pleased to tell you all that I, too, have now waited in the sun (California) for a ride (the “Jolly Trolly”) for what seemed, to me, like hours, at a theme park on Kina’s behalf.

Just like Disney World, Children’s Fairyland, in Oakland, is a vast metropolis of half-sized buildings and carnival rides. It actually predates Disneyland by half a decade, and was one of the first theme parks in the country, built by a wealthy cabal of Oakland businessmen to spruce up Lake Merritt. Fanciful fiberglass structures featuring slides, mazes, and ersatz aquariums sprawl out over ten acres. There is a trippy little neon carousel, a famous puppet theater where Frank Oz performed with his puppeteer parents, and a train that travels very slowly in a circle with the circumference of a largish apartment.

Walt Disney actually visited Fairyland, apparently, and then built Disneyland a few years later, which says a lot about both Walt and Fairyland, but also about the difference between the two theme parks. Fairyland’s whole theme is fairytales, fantasies, and rhymes—the old lady who lived in a shoe, the owl and the pussycat, Thumbelina, the three little pigs. Walt’s parks share the same structure but are based on his own animated films—Snow White, Pirates of the Caribbean, Frozen. We’ve come to think of the Disney parks as the ur-themeparks, and of the Disney films as our fairytales, which means we’ve forgotten all about Fairyland and most of the fairytales around which it was built. Nobody remembers Thumbelina. Everybody knows Cinderella.

Kina has barely taken a stationary nap in months, and yet it seems she is as vulnerable to the soporific effects of carbohydrates as the rest of us; she’s just a lot cuter when she naps.

dad

The vibes are strong on Thanksgiving, as always. We hope those vibes are good, for you.

dad

In true Lala style, today’s headline celebrates the confluence of various birthdays (Aunt Cordi!) anniversaries (Lala and Lolo Tim!) and returns (of us!)

Thanks to Lala for holding down the newsroom these last two days. We hope you all have acquired the necessary turkeys and will see you tomorrow.

dad