Feb. 29

“I get that a lot,” Keegan Przbyla of Saukville said when told he looks big for being only 4 years old.

Przbyla, who turns 16 on Saturday, has only had three actual birthdays in his lifetime.

His parents can’t agree on when to celebrate his birthday. His mother Nanci says he is a February baby and celebrates it on Feb. 28 during non-leap years. His father Paul said his actual birthday is March 1.

“Fifteen years they’ve been fighting about this,” Keegan said while he and his parents laughed. “I came home with my temps and it was March first.”

Keegan saved money from his job at the Saukville McDonald’s, where he worked his way up to crew trainer, to buy a 2002 Chevy Blazer that sits in the driveway waiting for its owner to pass his driver’s test on March 4.

Keegan, like Myla Buechler, was the only one born on Feb. 29, 2004, at West Allis Memorial Hospital. He was due two weeks later but his mother was hoping for the rare birthday.

“I wanted to have him so much on that day. I think it’s unique and I thought it would be fun,” she said.

Paul and Nanci were at the hospital soon after the clock struck midnight on Feb. 28. Keegan arrived at 1:28 a.m. Feb. 29

“He decided to wait. He was giving me problems already,” Nanci said.

Nanci was hoping to hold a 4-year-old birthday celebration with a cake, balloons and cards but got voted down.

Keegan’s actual birthdays have been filled with special events. He went to Wisconsin Dells when he was 4 and went see his grandparents in Arizona when he was 8. His parents made their oldest son open several boxes before getting to the plane ticket, which they folded into a paper airplane.

Four years ago, he went to the Kalahari Resort at Wisconsin Dells with a couple of friends.

This year, Keegan is going to dinner at the Mecca Sports Bar and Grill and then a Milwaukee Bucks game on Friday and to the Milwaukee Auto Show on Saturday. His parents have something else in store they wouldn’t reveal before his birthday.

Keegan is the only student with a Feb. 29 birthday at Port Washington High School, where he holds a 3.8 grade-point average as a sophomore. He loves math and science, especially chemistry. He said the University of Wisconsin-Madison is his “dream school” and hopes to be a chemical engineer.

Keegan’s math skills help him figure out which years are leap years. During a recent bus ride to school much of the time was spent convincing a classmate that 2000 was a leap year.

Keegan said birthdays during middle school were put on a calendar but his was skipped since the date didn’t exist.

He said another cool birthday would be Pi Day, March 14 (3/14), but said Feb. 29 “feels kind of cool to say I was born on that day.”

4-year-old to have first birthday

Myla Buechler of Port Washington is in many ways a typical nearly 4-year-old girl.

She loves chicken nuggets, sleeps with her stuffed animals and will talk nonstop when she gets to know someone, her mother Kim said.

One thing, however, separates Myla from most people, but she doesn’t know it yet. Myla was born on Feb. 29. She turns 4 on Saturday, but technically it’s her first birthday—the first Feb. 29 since her birth.

Myla will eventually come to understand that she was born in a leap year, which occurs every four years to keep calendars synchronized with the astronomical year.

Myla had a party for friends at the North Shore Academy of Gymnastics and on Saturday will go to Rockin’ Jump in Brown Deer with her family. She loves trampolines, her mother said.

After that, her grandparents will come over for a meal. Kim has narrowed dessert design choices to an Elsa cake or Peppa Pig cookies.

Myla loves to watch Peppa Pig and other shows on her iPad, including some in sign language.

“She knows the ‘Skip Ad’ button,” her mother said, adding that online advertising is “blasphemy” for Myla and her 6-year-old brother Brody.

Myla’s loves Happy Meals from McDonald’s. Her favorite is chicken nuggets and chocolate milk.

Her father asked her what her favorite food is and Mya said, “broccoli,” and then laughed.

She also loves mashed potatoes, buttered noodles, Teddy Grahams, potato chips, bacon, hot dogs and some fruits and vegetables, but not hamburgers.

“She’s a real carb-loving kid,” Kim said.

During mealtime, Myla will often take only a few bites of food before she says her tummy doesn’t feel good. When she sees potato chips or something she likes, Myla makes a “miraculous recovery” and is hungry again, her mother said.

She also has some spunk and attitude that Kim claims came from her father Mike. Myla and Brody often play house. Myla takes care of the baby dolls and home while Brody heads off to his job as a firefighter.

“Everything they do is a production,” Kim said.

Myla, she said, will try things before her brother. With the help of flotation devices, she once made her way to the 12-feet-deep area of a pool and told Brody to come in.

“She doesn’t have much fear,” Kim said.

Myla wasn’t due until March 6 but arrived early. She was the only baby born at Aurora Medical Center in Grafton on Feb. 29, 2016.

Kim said Mike’s parents get a kick out of the leap year birthday but her family is getting presents for a 4-year-old and not a 1-year-old.

Woman approaches teenage years at 48

Lisa Rabbittoy-Assmann of Belgium plans to have a leap year drink on her birthday on Saturday, but some question the legality of it.

“Everyone’s like, ‘You’re only 12, you can’t drink,’” she said.

Rabittoy-Assmann, who was born in Port Washington but has lived in Belgium since she was 8, turns 48 but has only had 12 actual birthdays.

“It sucked not having a birthday,” she said of growing up.

She used to celebrate on Feb. 28, but as she got older she joked that she wanted to push it to March 1.

She had parties for her milestone birthdays of 30 and 40 but they didn’t fall on Feb. 29. She and her girlfriends from Cedar Grove-Belgium High School usually go to the Pasta Shoppe in Port Washington, then to Schooner Pub and Grand Avenue Saloon.

On Saturday, she plans to go to the Pasta Shoppe for a leap year drink and dinner with her friends and then head to the Iron Hog Saloon in the Town of Port for a party with a DJ. Rabittoy-Assmann has been working at the bar for about a year.

This year, her 18-year-old daughter, the fourth-oldest of her five children, plans to join her for the party.