She won’t be old enough to drive for 64 years, to vote for 72 years, or order a martini for 84 years.
That’s because Sharon Marie Stephens was born on Feb. 29, a leap year birthday that only comes around every four years.
“I’m so excited, she’s my first baby girl,” said her mother, Millie Angel Stephens, of Cortez. “She will stay my little princess for four years, and never be old.”
Apparently little Sharon was determined to become the most recent leap year baby at the hospital.
“I went into false labor a few days before, so she wanted to wait,” Stephens said.
“I think she wanted all the attention,” said Shelley Davis, Millie’s cousin. “The nurses are taking turns holding her.”
Sharon was in a hurry too, requiring just six minutes of labor before entering the world at 11:06 p.m.
Stephens said she will celebrate her daughter’s birthday on March 1 between leap years.
“You can’t deny a child a birthday!” she said wisely. “But one every four years would save money on buying cake.”
Sharon has two older brothers, Shane, 8, and CJ, age 2.
“They will protect her if she’s teased for being a leap-year baby,” Stephens said. “I’m looking forward to all the frilly girl stuff, but her brothers could turn her into a tom girl.”
Julius Caesar introduced the concept of the first leap year in 45 B.C. Leap years are in place to align 365-day calendars with the solar year. It takes Earth 365 days, 5 hours, and 48 minutes to revolve around the sun.
That extra five hours add up, so much so that every four years the calendar is about one day behind where it should be. So, an extra day is added on Feb. 29 to correct it.
Some leap year celebrities include rapper Ja Rule, singer Dinah Shore, Pope Paul III, and John Byron, the inventor of shorthand.
jmimiaga@the-journal.com
