Anyone celebrate your child's 1/2 birthday in June instead of real birthday in Dec.?

Our son's birthday is very close to Christmas, and I've always hated how busy that time of year is trying to arrange his party during a time when everyone's having holiday parties. I also regret that he only gets presents once a year, whereas DS1 gets birthdays twice a year (Christmas and May birthday). I also would like for him to be able to get more outdoor toys as gifts, which never happens in Dec. when we're snowed in.

So we've decided that starting this year, we're going to switch and make his birthday celebration in June. I'm going to ask grandparents to go along with it too. (We talked with DS and he likes our plan.) Because we just had a big 5th birthday party for him in Dec., we'll make this year's celebration low-key (just one friend over) and then will wait until next June to go more full-out with it.

Our plan is to just do cake and ice cream with our family on DS's real birthday in Dec. and perhaps one small gift and then do the same on my other son's half birthday in Nov. (so it's fair for both of them).

Have any of you tried to do this with your child? If so, how did it work out for you?

I have always wanted to do this just so we can have a big pool party for my DS. His brother is a summer birthday and I feel he really misses out. I know there is somewhere out there that does this because I recall reading about here before.

I haven't but I am toying with the idea for this summer. Both my DC have Jan birthdays in the Northeast so no outdoor parties for them. We are having family come to visit us this summer in July at just the half birthday point so I'm thinking of having something for them while their cousins are here to celebrate with us.

One of my DDs preschool classmates did something similar, IIRC.

I do have to say, as the parent of a child with a birthday in June, that planning birthday parties in June is no picnic either. We usually run into end of school events, people leaving on vacations, graduations, weddings, etc. The years we have a full blown party (including people outside our family in other words) for my DD, we plan it for May at the latest because June is just so busy for most people!

I'm doing this for DD this year. She has a December b-day, but a June French "fete" or name day. We had a low key celebration in Dec, just the two of us -- and am planning a big shindig with a bouncy house and other summer fun for her friends, classmates and their families this June.

Honestly, while I do want her to have summer activities at at least one of her parties, the biggest factor in my decision to have the half year birthday was the utterly miserable experience I had in trying to plan and execute her 3rd bd party -- right after Thanksgiving, and at the beginning of the X-mas holidays. I couldn't face it this past year.

This our plan too...since DS2 is Christmas Eve and it was just too much for him to handle and for us too! We will have a small family celebration that day but otherwise keep it low key.

I love dcmom2b3 idea but DS2 doesn't have a name day! So we decided we would celebrate his 1/2 birthday in June and will also have a gift or two for the older DCs to celebrate the end of the school year! Since we normally are visiting my family in CA around that time it should work well at least I hope so!

My older DCs will continue their tradition of writing DS2 a letter about all the things they love about him and that that they or he did that year for his actual birthday...they also draw him a picture and pick out a book for him and write something in it.

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Originally Posted by dcmom2b3

She has a December b-day, but a June French "fete" or name day.

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I would love to learn more about this... is this a common French practice? Sounds neat.

Yes we do. DS's birthday is Christmas Day. We do cake and presents after Santa presents and before dinner. We have a party with friends around June 25.

J's birthday is in January, and we just had his birthday party a few weeks ago!
March worked really well for us; we were able to get the venue we wanted (Children's Museum) with very little hassle, and just about everyone we invited came because they didn't have anything else going on!
We did do a little family cupcake thing on his actual birthday, which he was totally fine with. I think we'll continue the practice in the future!

Quote:

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Originally Posted by dcmom2b3

I'm doing this for DD this year. She has a December b-day, but a June French "fete" or name day. We had a low key celebration in Dec, just the two of us -- and am planning a big shindig with a bouncy house and other summer fun for her friends, classmates and their families this June.

Honestly, while I do want her to have summer activities at at least one of her parties, the biggest factor in my decision to have the half year birthday was the utterly miserable experience I had in trying to plan and execute her 3rd bd party -- right after Thanksgiving, and at the beginning of the X-mas holidays. I couldn't face it this past year.

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That's how I felt. I had just hosted the in-laws over Thanksgiving and had to host DH's office holiday party at our house a couple of weeks later. Trying to throw in DS' birthday party into the mix--in addition to celebrating with him as a family on the actual day--was overwhelming. I was burned out after all that and as a result didn't enjoy Christmas as much as I would have liked.

I have a question for those of you who do celebrate it in a month that's not their birthday. Do you still make it a birthday party, do kids still bring gifts, do they still sing happy birthday? To me, that's the one thing I'm not sure how to manage. Do I make the cake say Happy Half Birthday, do I try to make the number 5 1/2 on his cake...that part does seem awkward to me.

Regarding the nameday, I just looked it up and DS's day is in the summer (but not in June). How do you go about celebrating that? Do you think that's a better option than his half birthday?