Weird Wednesday: It's My Birthday and I will Cry if I want to :P

Sooo... since it's my birthday and I have been waiting four years to say that, this post is dedicated to just that because having a birthday on leap year is weird enough in my book! 

For those of you who have no idea what leap year is, here is my explanation and trust me I have had plenty of practice saying this.

February 29th comes every four years for which I was lucky enough to be born on. Meaning that my actual day of birth comes every four years which means I have had 6 actual birthdays. So I often joke by saying to the kids I teach at school I am 6 years old which calculates to my real age in years at 24. 

and here is the wiki answer... to complicate the matter worse ;)

A leap year (or intercalary or bissextile year) is a year containing one additional day (or, in the case of lunisolar calendars, a month) in order to keep the calendar year synchronized with the astronomical or seasonal year.^[1] Because seasons and astronomical events do not repeat in a whole number of days, a calendar that had the same number of days in each year would, over time, drift with respect to the event it was supposed to track. By occasionally inserting (or intercalating) an additional day or month into the year, the drift can be corrected. A year that is not a leap year is called a common year.

February 29 is a date that usually occurs every four years, and is called leap year day. This day is added to the calendar in leap years as a corrective measure, because the earth does not orbit around the sun in precisely 365 days.A person born on February 29 may be called a "leapling" or a "leaper".^[14] In common years they usually celebrate their birthdays on February 28 or March 1. In some situations, March 1 is used as the birthday in a non-leap year since it is the day following February 28.

Technically, a leapling will have fewer birthday anniversaries than their age in years. This phenomenon is exploited when a person claims to be only a quarter of their actual age, by counting their leap-year birthday anniversaries only.

So I am sure your wondering... when do I celebrate my birthday or do I only celebrate it every four years? 

I celebrate when ever it's easy enough for me to celebrate and I do celebrate every year because I couldn't be happy without one day to celebrate my life. My mom use to tell me that we could celebrate a whole week if it wasn't leap year... which always made me feel special. 

The downside... 

In elementary school they call your name over the intercom to get a "special" really shiny sparkly birthday pencil. Every year I would miss out on that pencil even if I went to the office crying over it and no one knew it was my birthday so I felt forgotten.

Missing out on those special birthday moments sucks! So I often put my birthday as the 28 when I sign up for anything because otherwise I don't exist! 

Whats even funnier is when I try to sign up for anything online and I put my birthday as the 29th and they say invalid so I am forced to put the 28th to get access. 

And check this out... via USA TODAY

The chance of being born on leap day is about 1 in 1,461, says Raenell Dawn, co-founder with Peter Brouwer of The Honor Society of Leap Year Day Babies (leapday.com), an online club that counts 9,000 members worldwide. The group says about 5 million people worldwide celebrate leap-day birthdays.

lol check out the adorable leaping puppy... throwing this in just for giggles ;P

Overall I try to look at everything in a positive light. Having a birthday every four years is a great conversation starter and the look on peoples faces is priceless. Plus I am always reminded to take a leap instead of just the stride of everyday life!

Have a great leap year day... remember to take advantage because it only comes once every four years!

:)