Kid Sings Chipper New Song

A very small part of me believed that Kina might have made up today’s song, which she sang to me dozens of times in bed this morning as she woke me up:

I’ve got

a rilly good friend

and he likes

playin’ pretend

and we have

happy feelings

The meter was just too catchy, too well-structured to be hers, though, and she admitted to me later that it was from an episode of Clifford The Big Red Dog that she had watched while I writhed my way through an early-morning nightmare in which one of her caterpillars had escaped and was turning into an enormous chrysalis in front of my bedroom door. Happy feelings!

Child Learns All About Clouds

Later this morning, Kina asked to watch “a bug video”, which we have been doing for the last week as we learned about bees. My go-to move on bug videos is to visit The Kid Should See This and search for “bugs”, but on certain days another video will catch Kina’s eye, and we’ll learn about something else instead. So it was that we learned about clouds today. When we looked out my bedroom window after the video, Kina and I spotted some stratocumulus clouds—which we had just learned were harbingers of rain. But the weather was supposed to be perfect today! How could the Apple weather app be wrong? Sure enough, it started raining an hour later. Science is amazing. Kina, for what it’s worth, saw two dragons and a pig battling it out in the clouds. Kina is amazing, too.

Kina and Lala Take Hour-Long Nap In Back of Car

The Lala visit is going very well. They wear each other out—which is impressive, since neither of them is so easily exhausted. While we drove home from the playground, the two of them napped from across the wall of her car seat. It was a nice thing to see after a year of all this.

Archer Acquires Bow and Arrow

The other day, as I was waiting for an appointment, I walked into a very bourgeois toy store full of wooden trucks and creepy dolls. In the back, I found a bow and arrow, which I did not buy. Later that night, I mentioned the bow and arrow to Kina as she drifted off to sleep, and she latched onto the idea like a remora. So yesterday, after hearing several times about the bow and arrow I had “promised” to buy for her, I walked back into that bourgeois toy store and bought my child a beautifully crafted bow and (felt-tipped) arrows. Later, after her enormous nap, we spent an hour firing artisanal projectiles into the bushes at McCarren Park. It took some time for her to figure out whether to release the bow or the arrow, but it turns out that she is a talented archer, as long as her target is made of leaves and is fewer than ten feet away. I am like 15% confident that she will ever use the bow again.

Today’s Parade is a collaboration, conceived by Lala. At one point, she asked for an eraser to clean up an errant marker stroke. She, like all new contributing artists, has not yet fully accepted the chaos that is Parade. The image of the clock is a symbol of planning and accuracy, which is very much in the blood of Kina’s maternal line. Perfection is ever elusive, but we can show up on time, at least.

dad