Half-Birthdays

Our family celebrates Half-Birthdays!  I had never heard of Half-Birthdays until Gracia was born and had her first birthday.  You see, Gracia was born just a few days after Miguel's birthday, on May 19th. All that talk about Miguel's birthday coming up and Gracia's birthday coming up made Micah (three years old at the time) rather fussy and anxious for his own birthday to come (nearly 6 months away at that point!).  Our good friend, Tía Sue mentioned that her mother always celebrated their Half-Birthdays and I was intrigued.

Turns out that her mom had figured out the six-month date for each of her kids and then baked them a "half cake" to celebrate (basically, one cake cut in half and stacked) on that day.  I thought that sounded like a lot of work, but Sue said her mom made a lot of desserts anyway.  We worked out the dates and sure enough, Micah's Half-Birthday falls on April 30th, right before our two May birthdays.  And we've celebrated Half-Birthdays ever since (basically, once you start, you have to keep doing it because our kids won't let you forget about it. yeah.).

It may sound complicated to celebrate Half-Birthdays (and yes, the more kids you have (like me) makes it a bit more difficult), but we have strict rules regarding our Half-Birthdays.

1. No friends or parties or big deals, just the half-cake for dessert and maybe a candle or two.  
2. We sing "Happy Half-Birthday To You..."  It takes some practice fitting the extra syllable.   
3. No presents. At all. Period. 
4. The exact date of the Half-Birthday celebration is a bit flexible...if it's not convenient to celebrate said Half-Birthday on the actual date, Mom has the right to move it backwards or forwards a few days.
5. Mom and Dad don't celebrate Half-Birthdays since we kind of wish we weren't having to celebrate Whole Birthdays any more anyway. 

Of course, these are our rules...other families might want to do it a bit differently.  It's funny how excited the kids get about their Half-Birthday, and it's a neat way to celebrate and honor them in a special way. 

This year, we kinda forgot (okay, so we completely forgot about it) Jojo's Half-Birthday on March 29th, so we celebrated Micah's and Jojo's Half-Birthdays together (more convenient for me, just made two small round cakes and cut them both in half).

Here are the boys with their half cakes and 

our first attempt at making frozen yogurt 

in our ice cream maker.  It was good, we

used strawberry yogurt and frozen, chopped

strawberries.  I would cook the strawberries first

next time and add a bit more sugar...

Micah blowing out the last candle.  I'm

rather surprised Jkaile didn't get to it first!

You see Jojo's finger?  I think he was already licking the icing off his cake...