"At our house, we play out back. We play a game called 'Ring the Gack'...

if you'd like to play this game, come down! We have the only Gack in town." *

I don't feel well today. And we have guests, many many guests. One guest, two guests, red guests, blue guests. Guests in the garden, guests in the tree house, guests around the fire circle, guests in the Big House. It's awesome. But I wish I felt a little better today.

And we don't have a Gack, and we don't live near those guys who do, so I have another game that you can play with your kids, if you have some. You could play this with anyone's kids, though, really.

Here's an example of how we play this game: (everyone is piled on my lap or curled up around me)

Mama: "Kid A, what's your favorite thing about YaYa?"

Kid A: "I don't know."

Mama: "Mine is the songs that she sings."

Kid A: "Yeah, that's my favorite thing, too. I like the songs that she sings."

(YaYa beams.)

Mama: "YaYa, what's your favorite thing about Kid A?"

YaYa: "I don't know."

Mama: "I like his smile."

YaYa: "Yeah, that's mine too. I like his smile."

(Kid A grins; one of those heartstopping, sun-breaking-through-the-clouds smiles of his.)

And we go our separate ways, after we laboriously find out that all of us have the same favorite thing about Leafy. (!) His dancing. He doesn't really get the game yet, though, so he's been long gone.

And I notice that YaYa sings more than usual, and Kid A smiles at himself in the mirror, and we all have learned again how sweet it is to point out what is beautiful in each other.

*From One Fish, Two Fish, by Dr Seuss, only one of the best books in the whole world, and one I happen to have mostly memorized, due to the number of times we've read it.