The raw regex to get the month and day is: (january|february|...) \d\d?(?!\s*,\s*\d{4}).
(?!\s*,\s*\d{4}) looks ahead and makes sure the string is not followed by , YYYY. I hope I understood this part of your question. It will not match march 29, 2012 because march 29 is followed by comma space year.
