My daughter has a beloved little stuffed animal named Gigi that she takes with her everywhere. Gigi comes in the car with us to preschool and stays curled up in my daughter's backpack in her cubby until the end of the day. Gigi comes to the grocery store and rides down slides at the park. Gigi bumps around the house after my daughter, and my daughter can't sleep at night unless Gigi and Blankey are snuggled there with her.

But my daughter's absolute favorite thing about Gigi is Gigi's tail. She doesn't hold Gigi by any other part and that tail is threadbare and ragged from being rubbed. A few weeks ago, my daughter finally wore a hole in Gigi's tail. It was the middle of the night and Mark managed to soothe her back to sleep, but first thing in the morning, she called to me: "Mama, Gigi's tail is broken!" I sewed it up in a few seconds, and for a week, she talked about nothing else: "Mama, I was sad when Gigi's tail broke, and I cried, but then you fixed it. Thank you, Mama. You fixed Gigi's tail and that made me happy. Thank you so much, Mama!"

Now, I'm thinking I need to stop spending so much time doing the laundry and the dishes. I need to stop spending time picking up the toys and making dinner and earning money for odds and ends. Those things take forever, they're never really done and they're always taken for granted. But 15 seconds focused on the most important thing in my daughter's life gave her a week of joy and relief and earned me a week of praise and gratitude. Three-year-olds have an uncanny knack for reminding us what's really important.