"I will kill your friends and family to remind you of my love," the principal said in a deadpan voice.  I winced from my chair as Alexandra swung her little legs around, too small for the chair.  She made a little spurting sound with her pursed lips, obviously not understanding the gravity of being sent to the principal's office.

"Alexandra?" I prompted her.  "Is it true?  Did you say that to Kelsey?"

"Uh-huh," she nodded, oblivious to why that would be a problem and why I might be mortified.  My child, repeating my own lyrics, in a completely inappropriate situation.  I'd gotten a call about an hour before.  Her kindergarten classmate, Kelsey, had burst into tears in the middle of center time because my five-year-old adopted daughter had been singing lines from King George's song of my musical, Hamilton.  As my kid, she'd heard it multiple times.  She thought the line was hilarious, which it was supposed to be, but when directed at a highly sensitive kindergartner, it had missed.  Big time.

I wasn't mad at her.  In fact, I had thought it was absolutely hilarious.  But right now, I needed to be a united front with the other adult in the room, the principal at Hunter College Elementary.

"Alex, it's okay to sing that at home," I told her, glancing at the displeased principal.  "But you can't say stuff like that at school.  It might upset people.  Do you understand?"

"Daddy, can we go to the park?" she asked me instead, her big brown eyes looking up at me.  The principal cleared his throat and moved around in his seat.

"Not now," I told her.  "Right now we need to make sure you understand that you can't sing about killing people's friends and family. Kelsey thought you were serious."

"Then Kelsey's stupid," she said, and I was completely mortified.  I looked at the principal.

"I'm sorry, Dr. Fisher," I apologized for my kid.  "My wife and I will have a talk with her at home about this.  Make sure she understands it's not appropriate at school."

"I would appreciate that," he said, then looked at Alex. "Alexandra, I think it would be a good idea for you to apologize to Kelsey tomorrow. Could you do that, please?"

"I guess," she said, swinging her legs.  Dr. Fisher and I finished up and I shook his hand, apologizing again for Alex.  We stood up and I took Alex's hand.  Her Moana backpack took up almost her entire body as we made our way out the front doors.  We began walking down the steps, hand-in-hand.

"Daddy, Kelsey is so melodramatic," she told me.  I glanced down at her and chuckled.  Like me, she had big words from a young age.  Alex wasn't my biological kid but she was smart as a whip, just like her parents had been.  They had been killed in a crash when she was three and her brother was about 18 months old.  They'd been living with Pippa, me, and our kids for two years now.  It was Alex's second month in kindergarten and sometimes her peers had trouble understanding her sense of humor.  She was a quirky little kid.

"Why do you say that?" I asked her as we walked towards the nearest subway station.

"She knew I was kidding," she explained.  "I was singing and she was even smiling at me.  But when I said that part she lost her marbles."

That was one of my dad's phrases.  Alex was like a sponge.  She picked up sayings and vocabulary words with ease.

"Well, nevertheless you need to be more careful," I explained gently.  "People don't like joking about killing their family."

She sighed dramatically as we walked.  "Where's Joey?"

"She has soccer practice after school," I reminded her.  My oldest daughter, Josephine, was now a junior at Hunter College High School.  The kids were in different buildings, but were both under the same school.

"Oh yeah," she said.  Alex had taken up soccer too, wanting to be just like Joey.  She idolized her older sister and, frankly, they were very similar.  I could tell that Alex was going to be a firecracker, just like Joey.  She stood up for what she believed in and worked very hard.  She was good at pretty much anything she tried, but also wore her heart on her sleeve.

I held her hand tightly as we made our way through the subway station and onto a train back up to Washington Heights.  As we got off, she started skipping and begging to go to the park close to our house.  Even though she'd technically gotten in trouble at school, I didn't feel she really needed a consequence with us.  We just needed to talk to her about it.  I told her yes and as we reached the gate she ran straight for the swings, launching herself onto it on her stomach.  She held her arms out like a bird.  It was her favorite thing to do.  Fly like a bird.

I found a bench and scrolled through my phone, checking Twitter, posting a quick pic of Alex being a bird, which got thousands of likes instantly, and answering some emails.  My followers absolutely adored my pictures of my kids.  I was still very committed to keeping their identities private, however.  I never posted their faces, and communicated that to anyone who was around them.

Now that Joey was older, she was grateful I had done that with her.  She didn't want any extra drama and attention.  However, with social media, it was much harder for her.  Her last name was Miranda and everyone at school knew she was my kid.  She posted pictures of herself, but I still stuck to my original plan.  I wanted her to have a regular life.

Joey was struggling a bit right now.  Elliott, my stepson and Pippa's son, had gone off to college last month at Long Island University.  Joey was hoping he'd choose somewhere in the city, but his grades definitely hadn't been good enough to get into Columbia or NYU.  He wanted an experience away from home.  They'd been going out steadily for two years now.  Joey was crazy about him, as he was for her, and they had decided to try to do the semi-long distance thing.

They'd been separated before, but this was different.  Joey wanted him to come home more often than he wanted to.  Elliott wanted to have his full college experience.  Parties on the weekends.  Study groups during the week.  Intramural sports.  He barely had time to do anything else.  I think Elliott thought she was being a bit clingy.  She'd been emotional at home and short-tempered.

After a good 45-minute romp, I called Alex over to go home.  Pippa would pick her little brother, Jack, up from preschool.  It was my night to start dinner, so as we got home I started to get out pots and pans.  Alex got out her Barbies and action figures.  I chuckled as she made Mary Poppins wrestle The Rock.  Mary Poppins was winning.

The door flew open around 4:30, and I sweaty and angry-looking Joey walked in.  Her eyebrows were settled into a fierce wrinkle and I could tell she was pissed.  She slammed the door.

"Close the door gently!" Alex admonished her from the floor.  She was constantly correcting people with teacher language now.  Joey rolled her eyes.  I checked my watch.

"I thought you had soccer 'til five?" I asked her.

"Practice ended early," she told me shortly, going straight for the fridge.  She found a Gatorade and unscrewed the top.  I noticed grass and mud stains all over her uniform.  Her shin guards were still on, which made me think she'd left in a hurry. 

"For you or for everyone?" I asked her, wondering if the coach had kicked her out again.  She and her new coach had been butting heads lately.  I think it was mostly because she was upset about Elliott and overwhelmed with the demands of her junior year schedule.  But also, the coach was a bit of a hard ass and didn't take any sass.

She sighed and didn't answer, so I knew it was the former.  I knew my kid and knew lecturing her right now wouldn't be a good idea.  When she was angry, she needed space.  I quietly continued with the dinner as Joey chugged her Gatorade.  When she was done, she tossed it in the recycle bin and went straight for the shower.

Pippa walked in with Jack a few minutes later.  He was still elated from his afternoon at preschool.  Jack was doing two afternoons a week and completely loved it.  He ran for his big sister, ready to play.  Luckily, Alex and Jack got along famously.  She hugged her little brother and they started happily playing together.  Pippa sighed and walked over, giving me a quick kiss.

"What did the principal say?" she asked.  I'd texted her earlier about the situation.

"Just that she needs to apologize," I explained.  "She's not in trouble."

She nodded and opened the fridge to get some milk for Jack.  "Alex!" she called to our daughter.  We had formally adopted them a couple years ago now.  They'd both been so young when their parents died that they easily just started calling us Mom and Dad.  Alex was fixated on her fantasy game and didn't seem to hear Pippa.

"Alexandra!" she called again.  Alex looked up, her eyes bright.  "Come here please."

She stood up and said something quietly to Jack, then walked over to where we both stood in the kitchen.

"Did you upset Kelsey today?" Pippa asked her, one hand on her hip.

"Uh-huh," she said.

"And do you understand why?" she asked our daughter.

"Yes," she said.  "She doesn't understand jokes."

I pursed my lips to keep from laughing.  "Not everyone finds the same jokes funny," she acknowledged.  "So no more joking about killing people, okay?"

"Okay," she agreed softly.

"Good," Pippa said, ruffling the top of her head.  "You can go play again."

She rushed off, glad to be off the hook.  Pippa looked at me and rolled her eyes.  "I'm gonna go change," she said.  "Can you get Jack some milk?"

I nodded and we shared another quick kiss.  I shoved the casserole in the oven and filled a sippy cup for Jack.  After screwing on the top, I took it to where the kids were playing, just as Joey was coming out of the bathroom.  She sighed and went back to her bedroom.  After giving her a minute to get settled, I wandered back to her bedroom.

She told me to come in after I knocked, and I closed the door.  She was looking at her phone, seemingly frustrated.  Her eyebrows were still settled in an unhappy position, like it was quite a lot these days.  I pulled out her desk chair and sat.

"You okay?" I asked her gently.

She sighed and looked at me.  "Fine," she said, which was her normal answer.  If you wanted a real answer from Joey, you had to dig for it.

"Did you butt heads with coach today?" I asked her, scratching at my goatee.

"She still has us doing drills over half the practice," Joey complained, pulling things out of her backpack.  If it was like most nights, she'd have hours of homework still to do.  She was in three AP classes, soccer, and debate team.  "We need to be running scrimmages.  That's what coach did last year."

"Sounds like their styles are a bit different," I observed as she slapped a notebook on top of her trigonometry textbook.

"She's an idiot," Joey groaned.

"She's your coach," I reminded her, raising my eyebrows.  I'd tried to teach my kid that while she might not agree with everything someone did, she should still treat them with respect.  "Whatever she decides you need to do."

"But I'm the captain," she reminded me, fishing around for a pencil.  "I should have some say."

"You're there to motivate the team," I reminded her.  "You're not there to make coaching decisions.  What message do you think you're sending your teammates when you argue with the coach?  Hmm?"

"They're thinking the same thing as me," she said, tucking her legs underneath her into a pretzel position.  "I'm the only one brave enough to say anything."

I sighed a little, knowing Joey was hard to sway.  "You need to be respectful."

She clicked the eraser on her mechanical pencil a couple times and labeled a fresh notebook paper with her name and math period.  "I have a lot of homework," she said, resting her chin in her hand.

I nodded, knowing that was my cue to leave.  Joey didn't like to be lectured.  She was born knowing everything.  "Dinner will be ready in half an hour."

I stood up and headed to the door.  I glanced back at my kid, almost an adult now, and saw her furiously working at her first trig problem.  She had no chill whatsoever, just like me. 

When I got back to the kitchen, Alex and Jack were still happily playing on the floor.  The coffee table had since been turned into a cave.  From what I overheard, The Rock and The Ninja Turtles were joining forces to defeat Mary Poppins and the PJ Masks.  Things were getting intense.

I washed some of the pots and pans as Pippa walked out, talking on the phone.  From what I heard, it was her son, Elliott.

"Isn't it past the point you can drop classes?" she asked as she grabbed a piece of mail and slid her finger underneath.  "But you need fifteen credit hours.  Yes."

She was quiet for a while as she scanned through the mail, chucking most of it into recycling.  "No, I won't wire you more money," she said firmly.  "That's why you had a summer job."

I could tell he was arguing with her by the expression on her face.  "Well, that's nice for Jason, but Lin and I aren't going to-"

"Elliott, the answer is no," she told him after an interruption.  "Are you coming home for Labor Day?"

After another thirty seconds or so of intense conversation, the call ended.  Pippa sighed heavily and set her phone on the counter.  "Unbelievable."

"What did he want?"

"To drop a class and for me to wire him more money," she said, incredulous.  "He has to be a full-time student to get financial aid.  He just wants more time to slack off.  Apparently his roommate's parents send him $200 a month of spending money.  No way we're doing that."

"Definitely not," I agreed as I filled a pot with water to boil some vegetables to with the meal.  "That's what Foot Locker was for."

Over the summer, he had a part-time gig at the shoe store, but ended up not working a lot of hours.  He and Joey had wanted to spend as much time together as they could.  Now that he had no money to spend, he was wanting us to hand it out to him.  We were well-off financially, but Pippa and I had both agreed that we didn't want our kids to coast through life.  They had what they needed, but we didn't spoil them.  If they wanted spending money, they needed to earn it.

Fifteen minutes later, it was time for dinner.  I sent Alex to go get her older sister, and soon the five of us were sitting around the table.

"Where's Elliott?" Alex asked, which she'd been doing a couple times a week still.  She kept forgetting he was away at college.

"He's at college, remember?" Pippa told her patiently.

"Oh yeah," she said, stabbing a noddle with her fork.  "Why does he have to go away to college?"

"Well, that's what most people do," Pippa explained.  "After high school, you pick a school that's usually away from home."

"But where does he sleep?" Alex asked innocently.

"Well, he has a place to stay there," she said.  "It's called a dorm.  He has a little room with a roommate and they stay there."

"Oh," she said.  Joey sighed heavily, stabbing at her food but not eating a whole lot.

"Hopefully they're the only two staying there," she mumbled, her cheek resting in her hand.  Elliott had been pretty popular in high school.  He'd been with Joey from his junior year on, but many girls made it clear they were interested in him.  No doubt he was getting the same attention at college.  Now, Joey wasn't there to thwart the lady callers off.  It had become a major sticking point between the two.

"I don't think he has time for girls right now," Pippa told Joey.  "He's so busy that he wants to drop a class."

Joey crinkled her eyebrows and took a bite of the casserole.  "And go down to twelve credit hours?  What a slacker."

People could easily be classified as slackers in Joey's eyes.  If they didn't work insanely hard like she did, they were being lazy.  She was hard to keep up with.

"Right?" Pippa agreed, and Joey smiled a little.  I was glad that my fiancé and daughter got along well for the most part.  Occasionally they butted heads, but nowhere near the amount she still clashed with her mother.  Their relationship continued to be volatile, even from hundreds of miles away.  Joey had spent part of the summer with Clarita in Chicago and it hadn't gone smoothly.

As we finished, I asked Joey to do the dishes and she reluctantly agreed.  Pippa and I got the kids down and finally had a few minutes of peace together on the couch.  I propped my feet on the coffee table as Pippa reclined, her head in my lap.  We were just starting to relax when Joey walked out, phone in hand.

"Dad, can I go visit Elliott this weekend?" she asked me.

"I don't see why not," I told her. "You have a soccer game Saturday, don't you?"

"Yeah," she said, scratching her arm. "Afterwards. Then I'll come back Sunday afternoon."

"Woahhh," I protested, standing up, forcing Pippa to move. Joey looked up at me from texting on her phone. "I don't think that's a good idea."

"Why not?" she asked. She always demanded an explanation.

"I don't think it's appropriate for you to stay overnight with your boyfriend," I said, crossing my arms.

She furrowed her face like I was being ridiculous. "Dad. We've lived together for two years."

Good point. But this was different. "This is different," I said. "You'd be staying in the same room, I assume?"

"Yeah," her attention turned back to her cell phone. "Dad, he's in college. You can't still expect us to follow the open door rule, can you? It's archaic."

I sighed, looking down. It was true that Elliott was now in college, but my daughter was still in high school. She was only sixteen. "Joey, the answer's no," I told her, getting her attention. She crossed her arms and studied me.

"But Dad-" she said. "I haven't seen him in two weeks."

"You can visit him for the day, but I expect you home by eleven like normal," I told her.

"You're serious?" she asked me, again looking at me like I was insane. Pippa had since stood up and was now going to the kitchen for a drink.

"Joey, I don't think it's a good idea either," my wife backed me up. "You're still a junior in high school."

"We've been together for two years," she reminded us as Pippa found the wine. "It's not like we haven't...done stuff," she trailed off, not wanting to get into details. I didn't live under a rock. I'd been a teenager myself not long ago. My high school girlfriend and I had had sex.

"You can visit for the day and that's it," I told her. She growled and stormed off to her bedroom. At least she knew better than to slam the door this time of night. If she woke up the kids, she'd be in hot water.

I let out a breath as I fished two wine glasses out of a cabinet. "Am I being unreasonable?" I asked my wife, setting the glasses on the counter.

"Not at all," she said as she began to pour our wine. "I don't think it's appropriate."

"Well, I'm glad at least you agree with me," I mused as she finished pouring the first glass. I picked it up and waited for her to pour the second. We dinged them together and both took a long gulp.

Pippa and I seemed to agree on most things parenting-wise and always tried to present a united front. Even if we didn't agree in the moment, we would never let on to any of the kids we didn't. As a father, I was constantly second-guessing whether I was being too strict or 1950's with my teenage daughter. She needed to have some limitations, but it was still 2019.

"Do you think they'll stay together?" I asked Pippa as we stood in the kitchen, sipping our wine.

She shrugged her shoulders. "They're both in very different stages of their lives now. The distance thing will be hard."

I nodded in agreement. We had wondered if they'd break up once Elliott shipped off, but they were deciding to stay together and do the semi-long distance thing. Long Island University was only in Brooklyn, but it was about 45 minutes away. They couldn't see each other daily.

We finished off our wine and headed to bed a few minutes later. Time would tell if Elliott and Joey would stay together, but as I curled my body up with my fiancé, I knew there was no doubt we'd ever be apart.