My 4 1/2 year old daughter has been in a game playing mood all day today and if you have kids and you're like me, eventually you need a break just to sit and be entertained simply by sitting and doing nothing else: a kid's worst nightmare. To these little people that seems like a 'punishment' of some kind. I tried to get around this at one point today, since she was in the business of creating new games out of thin air, by suggesting a new game called the 'Sit on Your Butt' Game. Participants, I explained, would sit on their butts in one place on--that's right! You guessed correctly: The couch!--and the one who lasted the longest by resisting that incredible urge to get up and run around, would win! It didn't work. She just laughed at me, but at least I was trying a little creative take on "Sorry baby, daddy needs to rest." which is eventually what I said anyway. If their constant movement doesn't make you long for an extended session in a zero-gravity tank (even though you really don't know what that's like, although a lot of things are sounding really good right about now) their endless chatter likely will. I said to my daughter at one point earlier today, "doesn't your jaw ever ache from the sheer amount of talking that you do? If I talked that much mine would surely hurt, no doubt. You know....one day you're going to consider silence a sacred rite. You could start to consider that valuable at any time...and I would honor you completely in that." *smile* She looked at me smiling because I was smiling, but of course this was just a minor public soliloquy from myself to myself as my words glided effortlessly over the tops of her clouds. Ahhh. Parenting...