And the winner is...

...wait a second. I'll get to that in a minute. You didn't think it was going to be that easy, did you?

I was going to hold the drawing last night at midnight, but Price-Waterhouse my kids were asleep. As was their mother, but entries were closed, so it didn't much matter.

I rose early this morning, cutting up twenty-five tiny slips of paper and numbering them all. I was going to have the kids draw one, and the comment that corresponded to that number would be the winner.

Who sees the problem with this?

Two kids. One winner.

So, first we had to resolve the dispute about who got to draw the slip of paper. A rousing round of "rock, paper, scissors" ensued, which resolved nothing, because my daughter waits until about ten seconds after her brother has shown his hand, then does whatever will trump him.

So then, we had to deal with some fairly well-founded allegations of cheating, and the importance of being honorable, and how people were trusting us to do this right, and how flicking your sister on the forehead is not an accepted means of dispute resolution.

I considered offering one child an extra cookie for their dessert tonight if their sibling got to draw. I considered drawing a number myself. Finally, the kids came up with a solution: they would each draw a number, and the winner would be the average of their two numbers. If that turned out to be a half-number, we would round up. I shook the lunch sack containing the numbers vigorously, which was a much kinder alternative to shaking the children vigorously.

Child #1 drew the number 22. Child #2 drew the number 25. In the end, it didn't matter, because both numbers and comments belonged to...

Jill Hayes!

Jill, an electronic gift card will be winging its way to you as soon as I have your email address, and as soon as the company sponsoring the giveaway makes use of it. I will send you a message on Twitter to let you know you've won and to get your address.

So, in the end, it didn't matter one jot: both kids would have picked the same winner. But, in case you were wondering, now you know why my household is not in charge of tabulating the winners of the Academy Awards.