hee hee

Remember Kayla*, the butterfly child? The one who's so enthusiastic about everything she does that she can't sit still? She weighs like four lbs, I swear. Tall and skinny and fluttering everywhere. She eats quite a bit during snack time at 3, but it's all burned off by 3:15. She's filled with equal parts of joy and frustration. She's so creative her mind and body are going 100 m.p.h. all the time. She just cracks me up.

She got a kitten for her birthday last year in early February. She says the kitten was born on December 24th.

She's been terribly excited all week because she's planning a birthday party for her cat.

She and her partner in crime, Will*, have been busy all week with supplies for the party. First, they made invitations. Each one was a hat, folded from a tiny sheet of orange paper.

Will made a birthday card for the cat yesterday, and they both spent time making confetti yesterday afternoon, too.

I do not know if this party is really going to happen, but they're proceeding as if it is. She's invited everyone in our program and approximately half the school, I think.

I was sitting with them at the table while they discussed cats with a couple other kids.

Will said that his cat had originally been named Snowbelle. "With an e, you know. " he said. "But then we took her to the vet to get fixed, and the vet said, "It's a boy. So now the cat's name is Snowball."

Then Will said that with cats, it's hard to tell when they're very small.

Kayla said, "No, you can tell. You have to look under them. You know that thing that boys have? Well, boy cats have them too. If you look under your cat, and there isn't one, that's how you know it's a girl kitty."

That's today's tip for you all. Just look under the cat.