I’ve often joked with my wife that a pause button for our six-year-old daughter would be an absolute God-send. It wouldn’t have to be much: just something that one could press, say, once a day for ninety seconds of peace. “Then you’d complain that you could only press it once,” she laughed. And so she’s probably right. But in reality, the Girl has a pause button. How else can I explain the fact that she went to bed last night discussing the “favs list” pages of her new activity book and woke up this morning and, rubbing her eyes, said, “There’s a list for favorite patterns. Daddy, what’s a pattern?”