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"    In last week&amp;#039;s post I mentioned that years ago, I was in labor at Christmastime. In a funny coincidence, five or six WD staffers have since had holiday babies too. Back in 2005, we even ran a wonderful photo of the four newest mothers, with their little ones, in the magazine. I thought it was a joy to have a baby at this time of year. There&amp;#039;s a happy buzz in the air, which is just how you&amp;#039;re feeling. And everyone lets you off the hook when it comes to strenuous holiday prep. But then that baby turns 1 year old, and you&amp;#039;re faced with a question: Christmas/Chanukah/birthday\u2014how do we celebrate? The WD moms have made a point of separating holiday from birthday. We think every kid deserves a real birthday celebration, not some twofer gifts one day in December. But if you do celebrate, that gives you a really jam-packed month and an awful lot of excitement, especially for the littlest kids. The solution came to me when my son was 8. That June, the Razor scooter came out, and he wanted one really badly. A little ding went off in my head: Why not celebrate his half-birthday in June and get him the scooter? If we made it a tradition, it would space things out nicely and he&amp;#039;d be able to have outdoor birthday parties (not like when he was 4, when there was a huge snowstorm, and I and half his class had the flu to boot). So that&amp;#039;s what we&amp;#039;ve done ever since. Little 6-inch cake in December and one small gift to mark the day; bigger deal in June. (That&amp;#039;s a photo from Jay&amp;#039;s 11 1/2 birthday, top right.) It&amp;#039;s unconventional, but we like it\u2014even though my son always got puzzled looks when he brought cupcakes to school (they let out too early for the half-birthday, so we had to do it in December). &amp;quot;How old are you today?&amp;quot; &amp;quot;Nine and a half!&amp;quot;\u2014Diane Oatis Is there a Christmas baby in your life\u2014or are you one? Tell us in Comments. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.womansday.com/life/a41241/christmas-babies-6127/>