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Dear Hannah,

Today, you're 7. Seven whole years old.

It's all been about numbers recently. Your dad and I are learning math all over again, since you bring home a truckload of homework each week, and you're having to work harder at math than anything else. I honestly can't believe some of the stuff you're being forcefed. But you seem to be doing just fine, so I'll let it alone, even though I think all of us first-grade mothers should take a pile of your math workbooks up to Washington, D.C. and swat some of those donkeys and elephants upside the head.

When you were born, my friend Elizabeth pointed out that you arrived with the coolest arrangement of numbers: you were born in the third month on the twenty first day at 2:30am, all of which works out to be 0321230. Another palindrome of sorts, but with a centering point. I think you planned it all, since it took 40+ hours to get you here, and even then you came reluctantly: You were unceremoniously hauled out with forceps.

Sometime in our 3rd-to-4th year, we were playing our customary game of seeing who loved each other the most by lobbing successively higher numbers at each other: Mommy, I love you 9. Hannah, I love you 10! Of course I invented the silly thing to teach you numbers, we dumb parents never miss an opportunity to keep your noses an eight of an inch away from the education grindstone. Then one day you stopped mid-game and said, "Mommy, I love you ALL the numbers." An earnest little nonsense phrase that, in all its awesome simplicity, just took my breath away. And ever since it's become just yours and mine: Thank you for that.

I made it to age 7, too. Mothers share this absurd pathology: we all think you guys are going to croak at random points during the day. It's hard for me to even let you out of the house. And you sleep in our bed more than you should but only because I need to get a decent night's sleep every now and then. I never wake up when I can hear you breathing. One night last week you had a bad dream and you climbed into bed with us, and, at 2 am, you wanted to know if you drank wine, would that mean you'd have to eat cows and dogs. Well, the bad news is that you eat cows, and you love it. There was a brief period in August 2007, when you swore off bacon because you thought pigs would become extinct. But you shouldn't eat dogs. Wine is ok, just don't tell any of your six grandmothers I said that.

This past year has been not great for you. We need a few good cancer survivor stories, since all you talk about now are Pie (he died last year two days before your 6th birthday), and Bob. Living through someone dying is a hard, hard thing for grownups, and I cannot imagine what it must be like for a 6 year old. You don't want anyone to die, in fact you wish death was never invented. You're not sure you like God very much because he eventually takes everyone and spirits them off to heaven and you don't get a choice in the matter. And heaven is a rotten place since nobody comes back from heaven, ever. No matter what they say in Brother Bear. Yeah, I'm not too happy at God right now either, but this is about you, not me.

You still have a hard time making new friends, and now you wait for them to come to you. I've watched the uncertainty on your face as you go about this whole business of managing friendships, and I've also seen how quickly you move on in the wake of rejection. So, I'm not worried, you're doing great. When kids say no it always seems amplified, yet it's little more than a tonally flat echo of all they know, a compass that doesn't yet stretch much beyond their handful of years. But those NO!s are so effective, bloodlessly decapitating the recipient (and her mother). And upon delivery they're gone, off and running to the next shiny object. I'm happy you and Sydney are friends, and now I have a little more insight into your first-grade peers, after we sat there last week waiting for our parent/teacher conference to start, thumbing through all the class essay books your teacher put together. One tugged at my heartstrings, a few sentences by a little girl who wrote that this year she wanted to learn how to take care of a baby. Thankfully the rest were all standard fare entirely self-absorbed ambitions. Except for the boy who wanted his parents to stop smoking. In 2008, you wrote, you wanted to learn big words.

And I have to tell you (again) how proud I felt as I sat through your second first-grade conference, only to have your teacher repeat what she told me the first time we did this. We reviewed your (excellent) progress, ambling through the usual robotisms on good citizenship, listening well and following directions. And these were the comments that reduced us both to silence: You're a peacemaker. You're a friend to all, and a mentor for other students. Mrs. Kroger said you're a teacher's dream.

Kid, you blow me away. Forget Obama, you run for President. I love you, every single number under the sun, and then some.

Happy Birthday, Bananahead.