Kiddo and Babs like to hide (in the same four places), wait for someone to come by, and jump out and yell "Surprise!" It is never a surprise because they are always there, and they are usually visible. This has been going on for a very long time. At first I indulged them, now I acknowledge them, but not always in a supportive way. (I once replied to their hiding behind the door in the entry way with "you know what would be a surprise? If you actually put on your shoes like I asked you to.") I keep waiting for this phase to be over, but that may never happen.
Despite the joy of surprising others, they hate to be surprised, so there is now a rule that you can only surprise mom or dad, not each other.
They used to hide between their beds, in plain view where I could see them as I walked in the door. "Hey Kiddo" I would casually say. One day she sincerely asked, "How do you know I'm there?" My first response was, how could I not know you're there? but I didn't say that because she seemed truly perplexed. I paused to think about it and then realized, I'm over a foot taller than both of them. I called her over to her doorway, and lifted her up so she was looking from my perspective. "Now do you know how I know you're there?" And she understood. When she came into the room, she couldn't see between the beds, so it seemed like a good hiding place to her. (I then showed her that if she laid on her side next to Babs' bed I actually couldn't see her, so she's there pretty often.)
The ironic part of the never ending game of surprise is that when the house is dark, and we think they are all asleep, Kiddo is the master of silent movement. She silently pads from her bed to wherever we are, and if we're lucky, we see her before she stands still waiting to be noticed in the shadowy corner. Both my husband and I have been seriously startled by these events more than once, enough to scare her by our responses (man-ly yelps and all).
