This Is A Thing, Apparently
Babies Born On Leap Day Wear Teeny Tiny Wear Frog Hats & It’s The Cutest Tradition
Leap Day babies, who are adorably referred to as “leaplings,” make up less than .1% of the total global population.
Hospital nurseries and NICUs are special places. Not only are they filled with the building’s most adorable residents, but they’re often more prone to being festive than other wings. Take the case of babies born on Leap Day. Apparently, in some hospitals it’s tradition to give them wee frog hats! Get it? Leap Day? Frogs leap all hippity hoppity? We at Romper just learned about this sweet rite of passage and we’re extremely here for it.
It began with a simple tweet from X (formerly Twitter) user @audipenny simply stating “The Leap Day babies are wearing little frog hats” along with a picture of a KTLA news segment featuring aforementioned babies in aforementioned frog hats.” Well, after collectively cooing as a staff, we looked into it and apparently this is a thing. At least since 2016, the earliest example we could find of it. OK, granted we didn’t put on our Sherlock Holmes hats investigating whether this was an older tradition, mainly because we got extremely distracted looking at all the adorable babies in frog hats. Like “Baby Girl Gomez,” featured today, Feb. 29, on ABC7.
Or this baby, featured on We Are Iowa Local News 5. She doesn’t have a name yet, according to the station, but she does have her little frog hat, and isn’t that more important?
Baby Camila was born Leap Day and so too was her dad, which is a two million to one chance according to Good Morning Sacramento. (No word on whether he wears a frog hat on his birthday.)
UnityPoint Health -Meritier highlighted its Leap Day babies back in 2020 and we can barely stand it.
Can we go on? Yes. We found a whole bunch of teeny tiny froggy babies. But we worry that showing you any more might be too much cuteness for one day.
Leap Day babies, who are adorably referred to as “leaplings” (because, apparently, this whole business just gets cuter and cuter) and make up less than .1% of the total global population. Downside: you only get to celebrate your actual birthday once every four years. Upside: it’s not just your mom and dad who think you’re special. You can prove it. Also you get to make corny dad jokes for the rest of your life. Like, when you’re 80 you get to tell everyone you’re finally turning 20.
Leap Day is already fun: we’re delighted (you might even say... hoppy) to have another reason to look forward to it every four years.
