Happy Birthday Ellen

Today is Ellen's 14th birthday. Celebrating with five other teenage girls, we all had dinner at Ferrari's Little Italy and Bakery followed by cake, dessert and a sleepover at our house.  Well not much sleep until after 2am Saturday morning.  Most of Ellen's high school friends are older - that is in the American age system. 

East Asia age reckoning assumes newborns are one and incremented on the Lunar New Year instead of the actual birthday.  So Ellen actually turned 15 on Feb. 10, 2013 (this year's Chinese Lunar New Year) using this methodology.  She is precisely 15 years, 6 months and 13 days old today.  There is logic to this method since the Chinese start counting your age at conception (no disagreement here about when life starts). Therefore she will turn 16 (in Chinese terms) on January 31, 2014.

Susan hates when I increment my own age on the calendar year, always telling me that I am misstating my age to everyone. My logic is simple - that way I can calculate my age by subtracting the birth year from the current year.  Maybe I have the modified Asian system.

The American Midwest Kansas Age Reckoning system :)   ---  age zero at birth with Gregorian New Year increment.

PS.  Don't tell Ellen she will be 16 in almost 5 months as she will begin to think about driving a car!