Spring has arrived in DC, which means cherry blossoms and warmer weather. Last weekend, my daughter and I went to the National Kite Festival, an annual tradition since I first started living here.

Warm weather has also brought a new daily battle with our daughter over whether today is a Shorts Day. It’s a confusing time of year. Some days are cold and wet, some are oppressively warm. Some days can’t make up their minds.

My first bike was red. Red tires, red handlebars, red seat. We lived on a dead end street in the suburbs, and once I learned to ride that thing I was out on the pavement wheeling around from sunup to the last glimmers of daylight. As I got older I learned how to repair a flat tire, and eventually how to replace those red tires once I’d worn them bald (due to excessive bodacious skids). Then I got curious and started taking the whole thing apart. I loved that it was machine I could understand and master even as a kid.

Our house is getting a new phone.

It’s called a Tin Can. If you spend a lot of time mingling with the kindergarten set, these things are white hot right now. Go to any playground in America and you’re bound to hear parents chatting about them.

There’s not a parent I know who isn’t worried about kids and technology.

That’s why the Tin Can exists. If it weren’t for the underlying fear we have of internet safety, it would be a laughable invention, like Elon Musk “inventing” public buses, or Adam Neumann coming up with the concept of roommates.

What job did you want to have when you were a kid?

For me, the answer was “inventor.”

I wanted to build robots and cool spy gadgets. I couldn’t really understand why nobody had thought of making a car that could fly yet, but I figured I could handle that easily once I reached adulthood, or at least 13. My greatest triumph in science class came in 8th grade, when I had to build a mousetrap demonstrating the use of simple machines. The minimum was 5; mine had 60+.

We bought a new house in 2024 with a big (for DC) back lawn. When we moved in, having a carpet of grass that was mine felt luxurious. But I realized pretty quickly that grass on its own is boring. You know what isn’t boring?

Trees.

After a little poking around online, we found RiverSmart Trees program, which plants shade trees for DC residents for free. This week, a friendly tree-lover showed up at our door in a baseball cap holding a giant tape measure.

I spent the holidays home with both our kids, which was both deeply rewarding and exhausting. This weekend we’re taking a grownups-only trip to New York, and I have a little time to think and finally pull together all my favorite books of the last year.

The Director, by Daniel Kehlmann

This might have been my favorite book of the whole year. It’s a novel loosely based on the life of D.W. Griffith, a film director in the early days of filmmaking. Kehlmann’s story begins in Hollywood, where Griffith was languishing in the 1920’s before abruptly deciding to return home to Austria moments before Hitler annexed it. Kehlmann’s storytelling is taut without being melodramatic–a remarkable accomplishment given the world-historical events that take place around Griffith as he finds himself ensnared in Hitler’s regime and still trying to make movies. There is a deeply moving scene involving a gathering of random acquaintances when Griffith arrives in Europe before going on to Austria. War is in the air, but nobody knows it for certain yet. The chill I felt when reading this section was very real.

Gosh what a year it’s been. None of it has gone the way I expected.

Way back in January, my family and I got out of town for MLK weekend. While staying at a cabin on a pond, I watched fat flakes drifting through the trees and felt at peace.

That was January 19.

Many of my friends in DC, and myself included, have been viewing the start of this year with dread. We feel powerless in the face of the new administration. Eight years ago, everyone was knitting pink hats and preparing for a massive demonstration on the day before Inauguration Day. This year, we are instead booking weekend trips to get the hell out of here.

These aren’t all 2024 releases, just books I happened to read this year that I liked. I know I am missing a few here but it’s the end of the year and I am weary.

As of today, our second daughter has been alive on this planet for five weeks. I’ve been on parental leave that whole time, and it has really flown by. Having a kid at the end of the year is really disorienting, since time already feels more compressed than usual with all the holidays packed into the final quarter of the American calendar.

But it’s also a bit boring, since most of our time has been spent at home, overseeing the baby’s three main activities (sleeping, eating, pooping). Today, against my better judgment (meaning that of my wife), I ventured with our baby out into the Great Unknown to shop for a new e-bike at REI.