It’s official. We’re in the home stretch.

“Do you know what today is?” I asked Sophie, when she showed up in my bed this morning. “Today is May.”

“MY BIRFDAY!!!!!!!!!”

“Well, today is not your birthday, but it is now May, your birthday month.”

Big smiles all around. Plans are already underway for the birthday party. Invitations went out, RSVPs are coming in. I must find a Piglet pinata. (Not so hard in Phoenix, I’ll give you the info on the store if I score big.)

And I’m already teary, anticipating the last day of school — May 21, which also happens to be Sophie’s 6th birthday.

We got to school today and I performed my second Junior Achievement task, which this time did involve money. (It was a bust, the kids already know how to identify coins.) Everyone — me included — was much more interested in the butterflies.

Did I mention that Sophie named her caterpillar “Soph-A-Loaf?” When I asked her a couple weeks back about the “pet” she got at school, she struggled to remember what it’s called and finally announced, “A raccon!”

I got it. Sounds just like cocoon.

By this morning, the kindergarteners had lost track of whose butterfly has emerged. The net cage is crowded with discarded cocoons and flapping Monarchs (just a few fatalities and a lot of red liquid — looks like blood; Ms. X says it’s dye that makes the wings a bright orange-red).

At carpet time, Ms. X announced that this afternoon, the class will set the butterflies free.

I can’t think of a better way to welcome May.

CORRECTION: MS. X JUST INFORMED ME THAT INSTEAD OF MONARCHS, THESE ARE “PAINTED LADY BUTTERFLIES”. AND THEY EMERGE FROM A CHRYSALIS, NOT A COCOON. SO I’M NOT SURE WHERE THE RACCOON THING CAME FROM. GIRLINAPARTYHAT REGRETS THE ERRORS!