Sharing a Birthday

Multiples share so many things in life, not least of which is their birthday.

We have two birthdays coming up. Two girls will turn six in November…on the same day too. They share their birth date and for now, they share their celebrations too. We still like to make the day special for each of them – individually.

We like to make a cake for each of our girls, and have candles for each of them to blow out. We often sing Happy Birthday twice – once for each of them, so they can have their moment in the spot light.

Now that they are old enough to want to have a party we always ask each of them to invite a set number of guests  (despite them often wanting to invite the same people). I can imagine, as they get older, they will perhaps one day want to celebrate their birthdays in different ways with different people. We will honor that too.

Gifts can sometimes be a bit of a sticky situation. Now that the girls are older, most people are on the ball and give each of our girls their own present, but we’ve had our moments of drama when both girls have been given one gift and been expected to share. Sometimes a single shared gift is a fabulous option. Last year they were given a board game, the perfect shared gift as you can’t play on your own. Often though, giving one gift to two children is a disaster. Giving two one-year-olds one push along toy (as happened to us) is just not going to work!

How do you deal with shared birthdays? How do your family and friends deal with shared birthdays? How do wish others dealt with shared birthdays?

(photo by me – Zoe and Izzy’s 4th birthday cakes!)