The ordinary afternoon may be giving a child the story they will tell about being loved.

Children rarely take their sense of being loved from the big arranged occasions. It comes from the texture of ordinary time: how you sounded in the car, whether you laughed at the same thing twice, the way a plain Saturday felt from inside. None of it looks important while it is happening, and a good deal of it becomes the story they tell later.

Since you cannot pick which afternoon it will be, put a little attention into the plain ones. Leave the phone in another room for an hour.