For a little while Hannah was making us cards every day, practicing writing on these pieces of paper to address them to us and write things like, “I love you” or whatever.

One day, she presented me with a card and then she said, “Mom, I would really like it if you made me a card.”

I was in the middle of working, so I said, “Okay, I can do that in a bit. I’m working right now, though.”

A moment later, she said, “Mom? Are you ready to make my card yet?”

So I said, “I’m going to be working for a while longer, Hannah. Why don’t you go watch some TV and try to forget about it for now. Maybe then when you get it, it will be a surprise?”

She said, “Oh okay. But how will I make sure I don’t think about it? Maybe I can say, ‘no card no card no card’ to myself and then I’ll think I’m not getting a card.”

I laughed and tried to go back to work. And then she said, “Or maybe, if you said I wasn’t going to get a card, I would think I wasn’t going to.”

To which I said, “uh, what?”

And she said, “Can you say, ‘Hannah, you’re not going to get a card today’?”

So I said, “Okay, Hannah, I’m pretty sure you’re not going to get a card today.”

“Okay,” she said cheerfully and ran off to watch an episode of Backyardigans.

After all that, I thought I probably better really make sure she got a card, so I only worked for another twenty minutes or so before I stopped and made her a card. She was coming upstairs at the end of her show when I went downstairs to give it to her. She read it and hugged me and said, “Thanks mom.” But then, “Mom?” She said, “I thought you were going to surprise me but I wasn’t surprised.”