Child Lays Out a Plan for the Day

Kina is a plan-oriented leader, and routinely sketches out detailed agendas for the day ahead, following in the footsteps of her mother, who would never embark on a day without a clear vision for how it might unfold. Today’s plan, according to Kina:

1. Have breakfast

2. Get dressed

3. Pre-K with friends

4. One-on-one with Ms. Olenick and Ms. Perez

5. Hannah comes

6. Go to playground

7. Have lunch

8. Take a nap

9. Say hi to Daddy

10. Eat a snack

11. Say hi to Mommy

12. Eat dinner

13. “Wake me up before you go go”

14. Daddy gives me a bath

15. Books

16. Nicole Kidman story

17. Go to sleep

At the end of every one of these lists, Kina asks “Good plan?” and we have to say “Good plan.” (Most of Kina’s days are very similar, and so it’s easy to agree to the plan.) Having a little person who walks around the house shedding light on routine is both charming and dispiriting. We spend so much of our time in this house, at least, in a state of mindless ritual, trying to keep our eyes fixed forward on the distant goal of “shots in arms, then leave the house”. What does my plan look like?

1. Have breakfast

2. Get child dressed

3. Shower

4. Elsa performance

5. Newspaper

6. Kiss before work

7. Video calls

8. Order lunch

9. Video calls

10. Say hi to Kina

11. Video calls

12. Emerge, gasping, from room

13. Dinner

14. “Wake me up before you go go”

15. Give child a bath

16. Books

17. Nicole Kidman story

18. Newsletter

19. Hang time with Mommy

20. Go to sleep

Good plan? Good plan. I think I get three more items in my agenda because I am awake longer, but otherwise it’s pretty consistent, day to day. I have been trying simultaneously to pretend this routine is not a routine and to embrace the zen garden of this day as the pandemic rolls on; if I were to interrogate this schedule, I would just be reminded of the fact that this house has become a tiny labyrinth of my own design, and I’d claw my eyes out. Instead, I focus on the best parts of the day I keep reliving, whose identification I leave as an exercise to the reader. Do you have a routine? What parts of it bring you joy? Do you get to sing “Wake me up before you go go” every day? Have you even tried?

I will say this: I am running out of cliffhangers for the serial fiction retelling of Nicole Kidman and Paddington (which has now significantly diverged from the source material), and I have no idea what will replace it once I get to the end. I cannot afford to mess with my plan, so it will simply have to go on forever.

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