Last night, as I cleared the dinner table, I watched my daughter playing mother in the living room. She held her own sippy cup, still half-full of milk, up to her baby doll's rosy plastic lips. When she proceeded to lose her grip and drop the bottle squarely on her baby's head, I heard her say "owie" and then give lots of kisses to the site of the imaginary wound. She rocked her baby, sang her Twinkle Twinkle, and tucked her in tight on the dog's bed with a pillow and blanket

One of my favorite gifts from childhood was a create-your-own story kit. It was a perfectly packaged set of pages with designated spaces to pen the world's next bestseller and illustrate pictures to go along with it. Then all you had to do was ship it to company headquarters, and—viola! Within 5 to 7 business days (okay, it was the early 2000s, so maybe longer), your book would be "published" and returned to you with a hard cover, glossy numbered pages, and, best of all, your