First of our series on Icon viewers born in a leap year on Feb. 29.
Reagan Mittendorf and two carloads of her friends will spend a day this weekend at Sky Zone in Fort Wayne. It’s an indoor trampoline park and it’s Reagan’s birthday party.
Depending on who’s counting, Reagan will be either 3 or 12. Her birthday is Feb. 29. She’s in a special group of people who were born in a leap year on the “extra” day.
Reagan, a Bluffton sixth grader, doesn’t remember her 2012 birthday. However, she admits having a Feb. 29 birthday is something she likes. She’ll have a cake with 12 candles, and she jokes that really there should only be 3. That’s a fact that most of her middle school friends don’t believe, according to Reagan.
The Icon talked with Reagan in 2012 when she was second grader, celebrating her “second” birthday. During that interview, Reagan recalled that when she turned 4 her mother kidded her that she was really 1. Reagan said she didn’t like that, but eventually understood it.
Reagan – she’s named after a president – is taking math, science, language arts, social studies and band, where she plays flute. She added that she needs to practice flute 90 minutes a week and assured us that she does here best to achieve that.
She likes to write short stories. Her favorite books are fantasies. “The Land of Stories,” a four-book series, is among her favorites. She says she’d read all four at least twice.
When we talked with her earlier this week she was working on a science project involving cells.
She planned to bake a cake and have candies on top that demonstrate different parts of a cell.
Reagan loves to play basketball. We saw her hit a couple 3-pointers during a sixth grade girls game played at halftime in a recent girls’ varsity game in the BHS gym.
She hopes to play AAU basketball this summer. She likes pop music, but claims her dad plays way too much music from the ‘80s.
We’ll hope to talk with Reagan next in 2020, when she’s 4, or 16. But, like we stated previously, who’s counting?
Below is a photo the Icon took of Reagan in 2012 and 2016.
