And I was able to i) set up and upload the child theme, ii) Network activate it and choose it for one of the multisites, iii) adding some text to the child theme’s header.php, and iv) seeing the change reflected on the header.
This is where I wanted to get at. I can now start the customization experimentation with PHP, which is independent of a multisite setup.
Thanks so much @alithewpdev
Huzaifa.