If you subscribed to the feed of another blog I used to have, you may have noticed that the address (which I politely gave up when I was done with it) has since been taken up by a spammy fake site. So if you ever linked to that old blog in a blog post and/or in your blogroll, your blog is now linking to spam! Yay! Aren’t people LOVELY? Any time a chance to bottom-feed opens up, people RUSH IN to take that chance! No opportunity too low!
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I bought something. Two somethings. They are hard to photograph in the morning lack-of-light, so perhaps I should have waited for later, and perhaps I could have dusted that shelf first, but bygones.
You can still perceive their loveliness, right? Even with the shadows and poor lighting and the dust? They’re candleholders. I got them at Home Goods. Each one can be adjusted to take a variety of candle sizes/types. They came in other colors, too; I saw a turquoise one, a bronze one, and one other color I forget. Cream or white, I think. (The little metal birds were a gift from a friend. The thermometer/hygrometer belonged to my grandparents.) It bothers me a TEENSY bit that the smaller one has blue jewels and the larger one has clear jewels, but I think of it as good psychological exercise.
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Two of my girl cousins (sisters to each other) are both pregnant at the same time (both for the first time), and I am quite excited. It’s fun to have babies to look forward to and buy little baby things for. And I love the idea of sisters pregnant at the same time. My second-cousin and I had overlapping pregnancies once and we had SO MUCH FUN emailing back and forth about it. And of course I am looking forward to hearing the NAMES! And one baby is a boy, and the other baby will hopefully give up that information this coming week!
And it’s fun that the two baby cousins will be so close in age. I wish I’d been closer in age to my own cousins. One girl cousin is four years older, so she was kind to me but she was always at a completely different stage of life. My other four girl cousins were all born when I was in the 10-15 range, so we’re a half-generation apart and they were always little kids to me, and I’ve always been ancient to them. I’m closest to my second-cousin, probably in large part because we’re almost the same age.
My own kids are stepping-stairs with their cousins: my kids are 13, 11, 7, and 5, and their cousins are 3 and 1.
Are you close in age with your cousins? If you have kids, are they close in age with theirs?
This has been an issue for me lately with the holidays. I have 3 girl cousins, and while they’re all very nice, one is 6 years older, one is 8 years younger, and one is 13 years younger. Same with my boy cousins. They’re either 10± years older or 5+ years younger. Because my dad is the youngest in his family and my mom is the oldest in hers. I have the most in common with my older girl cousin but she lives across the country and always had so we’ve never spent a lot of time together.
I am close with many of my first cousins, but I’m a lot older as a first time mom than any of them are, so I am behind and we’re not that close about it. I was pregnant with my second at the same time my first cousin who is a lot younger than I am was pregnant with her second and that was a lot of fun, we did email back and forth about it a lot. Then her second was very colicky and fussy and my first had been like that so we talked a lot about them when they were newborns, too. We live a few states apart but it has really made us closer than we ever were, having kids at the same time. Now our girls are almost five and that’s fun, too, they are penpals! I have only one sister and she doesn’t have any kids so it’s a nice familial connection.
I love and I mean love those candlesticks. Our Home Goods is in such a busy area of town I hardly ever go but whenever I see what you got there it always makes me want to go.
I won the cousin lottery. I have five on my Dad’s side and I’m the youngest by five years. I’ll always consider them “big kids” but we are close as adults. I’m #4 of 13 on Mom’s side and we are stair-stepped over 15 years so nearly a year between each of us. It’s a wonderful group and #7 cousin gave me a kidney 12 years ago! Talk about a dear cousin!
My dad has three brothers and sisters and six step brothers and sisters, so I have a zillion cousins. There is a huge age gap between the ten kids/step kids, so I have cousins who are 20 years older than me and cousins who are in high school. There were a few that were close in age to me and I was as close growing up to them as possible given we lived far apart, but now I’m not really close to any of them. Unless you count facebook, which honestly has renewed our relationships in a good way.
I am close-ish to five of my cousins on my mom’s side, all from the same family. We grew up (and our parents still live) three blocks apart, so we were together what felt like every day as kids. We grouped by age in two sets – the olders were girl cousin – boy cousin – boy cousin – me, with about a year gap between each. Then when I was four my aunt had another girl and my sister and my aunt’s last girl were born two years later, six months apart. So we had the Big Kids and the Little Kids.
My three-year-old doesn’t have any first cousins but he has some seconds he likes to play with at holidays. My middle girl cousin has boys ages 5 and 3, my older girl cousin has girls ages 12 and 8, and my youngest first cousin from another aunt is 8, so they all run around and play when we get together. Now I’m due in late February and the girl cousin my sister’s age is due in late May, so that’s pretty exciting :)
As kids, my brothers and I were in the middle of huge age span of cousins. On one side, there were cousins 15 years older and on the other ones 10 years younger. Not all that fun really. But my kids have cousins their age. Some born weeks apart. I think it’s really cool especially since they’ll go to the same school as some of them. I do have a younger unmarked brother that I jokingly tell him to get a move on since now his kids will be out of the age loop. Something tells me it’s not even on his radar to care about such things, haha
Because my husband and I are both late in life children and then HAD children late in life, our children and their cousins-once-removed are close in age.
The age discrepency is tougher on our son because he’s the oldest of the “little” kids during family get togethers. And when you’re 11 and the closest in age is 6, well, that does make him feel a bit lonely. On the upside, he’s free to act silly and all of them think he’s so cool to play with them.
Oh I love those birds! I mean everything in that arrangement is pretty awesome. I didn’t notice the jewels until you said that … psychological exercise indeed.
I am close in age with my cousins. We were all very close in the pack mentality way back when we were kids, and then we moved, and they moved, and we lost touch and were/are never close again. I see them once in a blue moon and we’re always happy to see each other but we don’t talk. My sister who is a lot younger than me, is close with another group of cousins that is also a lot younger than me. My youngest cousin is the same age as my nephew. My husband’s cousins are all older than us, and their kids are mostly our age, except for 2. There is always that oen sib that has kids way later, isn’t there? My kids are pretty much just behind their cousins. I get such a weird thrill out of owning the youngest children.. is that weird?
My favorite bit: “It bothers me a TEENSY bit that the smaller one has blue jewels and the larger one has clear jewels, but I think of it as good psychological exercise.”
I LOVE the candleholders (and the birds). So lovely.
Am emailing you about the cousins stuff because it is too complicated for a blog comment.
The cousin closest in age to me is 6 years older, and a man. The closest girl cousin is ~10 years older, and we’re not close. Even if we were the same age, I don’t know if we’d be close, because we grew up 1000 miles apart. Sad, right? And my kids will not have cousins their own age either. My husband’s siblings are all much older (he was from his father’s 2nd marriage), so all their cousins on that side of the family are MY age. And as for my side, I have one unmarried brother, seemingly intent on staying that way.
I have a boatload of cousins, mostly younger but one older. However, they all lived far away and I rarely saw them growing up so we’re not close. My kids have no first cousins but a lot of second cousins. Again, they’ve mostly never met them but the one we do see from time to time is almost exactly my daughter’s age, which is nice. (His mom is twenty years younger than me but she had him young and I had my kids late.)
Both of my parents are from six-kid families, with most of my child-having aunts and uncles having multiple kids, so cousins abound! On my mom’s side, my sister and I are the youngest, with the other cousins ranging from 6~15ish years older than me (I? Me? Ugh). On my dad’s side, I have cousins who are 15-20 years older (one of my cousins babysat me when I was a baby/toddler and was often asked if I was hers when we were out and about, so she’s enough older to have that look like a possibility), one who’s three years older, one who’s just five weeks younger, and one who’s about ten years younger. So! Most are in a different generation and were having kids when I was still young, but I did get *one* my same age, which was nice when we were teens and could share experiences.
I was never that close to my cousins-all younger than me, we didn’t see them often, and we all had extremely different interests (still do). My own kids are 11 and 7 and have cousins that are 14(boy) and 12 and 9 (both girls). My son is 7, but his 14 year old cousin is so glad to have another boy he is so kind to my son and plays whatever he wants to, etc. So sweet! With my daughter, we actually found out we were pregnant on the day one of her cousins came home from the hospital.
I love the candle holders! So pretty.
One of my cousins is 18 months older than me, and we were close growing up (well, as close as you can be when you live hours apart and the internet wasn’t a thing yet). We grew apart as we got older, which makes me sad.
My mom and her two sisters each had their first kid in 1975 and their second kid in 1977 so there were six of us all within about two and a half years. It was (and still is) awesome!
Now between all of us we have nine kids under the age of 7. It’s pretty crazy when we all get together.
Aww, how exciting for your cousins with the babies on the way!
I had one cousin on my dad’s side,six months younger than me. He lived a couple provinces away. On my mom’s side 6 cousins, I was in the middle age wise, but they lived across the country. I wished I had that big family experience but in hind sight realize my three siblings served just fine. I did not like when we were all mixed together on rare occasions and that feeling of knowing we were blood relatives, but actually strangers.
I don’t have kids yet (am trying now, yay!) but my nephews who live near us are 5 and 6. The ones a couple hours away are 2 and 4. I do wish my kids would have been closer in age to the in town cousins, because our family is such that we spend a lot of time with family and don’t really develop strong relationships with friends in entire family format. As in I have my girlfriends, my husband has his guy friends but we don’t hang out with child bearing couples. :)
I have to not forget about my own three siblings though. I feel optimistic one of them will have a baby around the same time as me and we will share that experience together via the internet.
My cousin and I are six months apart, but he is a boy and I am a girl, so he never wanted to hang out with me and preferred my younger brother. Boo.
My own children have no cousins and really no cousin prospects either. I solved the whole “people to play with” thing, though by having three of them the same year, so haaaaaa!
Jokes on me, I suspect.
My siblings and I have several sets of cousins around our ages or a little younger and only a couple of much younger cousins. Unfortunately we never lived near each other and so have never really been at all close.
I really love both of those candleholders! I think it works even though they are slightly different, they are definitely complimentary of each other!
My closest cousin is only 7 months older than I am and we grew up like sisters. We were in the same grade throughout school (the same schools) and the same dance classes, etc.
Other than her, all my cousins are a lot younger. My mom has 2 sisters that are 12 and 14 years younger than her, so their kids feel like a whole generation younger than me. At my wedding it was silly to think I’m old enough to get married and most of them are still in elementary school.
My only three first cousins are quite a bit older than me, I think ten, nine and seven years older. The younger two were boys, also, so they were always just these tattoo having, skateboarding rebels around the age when I would have wanted them as playmates or confidantes.
I do have four second cousins who were very close in age to the three of us in my own family, but they lived halfway across the country.
I now get along quite well with my actual cousins, though the oldest one, a girl, has kids who are quite a bit older than mine so we are at different parenting stages. The youngest cousin has just a two year old, though, so it’s fun being the older, wiser parent even though I’m actually younger than him. :)
My kids are very lucky in regard to cousins: my husband’s sister has three, a thirteen year old girl(old enough to babysit briefly) and boys eleven and eight. They live five minutes away and go to the same school, church, etc. My older kids (seven and five) really enjoy idol-worshiping them and even actually playing with the eight year old. Then MY little sister has an almost two year old and a newborn of the same genders as my own two year old and baby, which thrills me. They do live about an hour and a half away, but I am really hoping when her husband finishes school they’ll move back to town so my kids can live out my own childhood fantasy of having cousins/best friends in their own town and school system.
(I do realize arranging friendships is as archaic as arranging marriages, but one can hope!)
I was the oldest of all of my cousins. My kids don’t have any first cousins, but they have a lot of “cousins” who are my MIL’s cousins grandchildren. Are you with me? They’re all “aunts” and “uncles” and eight years later I go, “HOW is this person related to you?” Anyway, my kids are among the youngest, although there are two within six months of my oldest. I’m desperately hoping my brother gets married SOON and has babies immediately so my kids can have some real cousins close-ish in age.
I love the candleholders – they are YOUR color! I have 6 cousins. The oldest two are 20+ years older than me because my aunt is 15 years older than my dad. My middle cousins are my age almost exactly, and the one who is closest to my age (3 months younger) and I lead parallel lives. It is wonderful! I then have 2 younger cousins who I’m not close to because that whole side of the family is estranged. So there you have it.
I have a bunch of first cousins on my mom’s side. We seemed to have been born in bunches, with my bunch being the older (my mom is the fifth of twelve siblings.) I have a male cousin who is 15 hours older than I am. His sister is a year older than us, another famale cousin is a year older than she is. We have a male cousin two years younger than me and my ‘twin’ cousin. My brother is two years younger than the one who is two years younger than I am.
My girls got lucky with cousins too. My step-sister’s oldest daughter is four months younger than my oldest daughter. Her younger daughter is 10 months younger than my younger daughter. My brother’s son is a year younger than my younger daughter. I love it when the five kids get together. They’re all finally at an age where they play without adult intervention. Yay for cousins.
This cousin topic is very interesting to me because of a quirky parallel in my family. My mom has one brother and his four sons are 13 years younger than me (the oldest is a single, the other three are triplets and are one year younger than their brother.) I have one brother and his children are 13-17 years younger than my kids. I’m seeing the cousin relationships following the same pattern in relation to age and gender of the cousins.
Other than the aforementioned cousins, I have three cousins on my dad’s side. One is 15 years older and the other two are close in age to my brother and I. We were close up until our teen years at which point the two cousins (from two different families) both began a downward spiral that continues today, 40 years later. My brother and I have virtually had nothing in common with them so we are not close but we can chat pleasantly with each them when we see them at funerals.
I am the youngest cousin on both sides. One male cousin is six months older than me but the rest are 5-20 years older than me.
And I cant UN-FOLLOW that stupid blog you used to have lol.
I just realized I didn’t describe the parallels between the sets of cousins that are 13 years apart. When my cousins were very young and I was 13, I was completely in love with them and they with me. I babysat them and stayed at their house to help my aunt since they were all so close in age. My brother became their favorite when they neared their teens because I was no longer cool and fun but my sports-playing brother was and they idolized him through their college years. Now they’re nearing 40 and I’m 50. We’re reconnecting and establishing adult relationships with them as they are marrying and having children.
I have four first cousins: one is a year older than me, one is four years younger and two are eight years younger. I have always been closest with the one that is four years younger than me, probably not so much because of age, but because I spent more time with that side of the family.
I don’t have any siblings. My husband has three, but he is the youngest in his family by a lot – his closest sibling is 11 years older. So my kids have cousins that are, at least, twelve years older than them. I feel like they’re totally missing out on the cousin experience. It makes me sort of sad, because I really enjoyed my cousins.
(By the way, met a little girl today named Whisper. WHISPER!)
I have one cousin. I think he’s about ten years older than my older sister. He lives some distance away and I think I’ve met him three times? So I don’t really think of myself as having cousins! My children though have lots – my daughters are 2 and 4 and on my husband’s side they have four girl-cousins aged 23, 21, 19 and 11. And on my side, I overlapped having babies with my sister so her two are currently 1 (girl) and 3 (boy). I love that my girls have so many cousins and I love that they have some so close in age.
I don’t have any close cousins myself, but my kids are 2 and 5, and their cousins are 1, 2, 4, 5 and 6. My son has one cousin nine months older and another nine months younger; my daughter is 4 months younger than one and a year older than another.
I love have them so close in age. It’s fantastic at the holidays and they really look forward to seeing one another. My 5 year old, in particular, has become very good friends with the two cousins that are closest to her in age.
Both my husband and I have younger siblings, so while I’m done, I expect there will be another round of cousins in a few years.
I was smack in the middle of my cousins and I love love loved them. But since I am an only child, my kids don’t really have cousins. This is a huge heartbreaking thing for me. No Aunts. No Uncles. No Cousins. Isn’t that terrible? I think folks should maybe think about that before they decide to have only children. (Which is really really judgey, and I don’t mean it to be. It just is a very very sad thing for me.)
I am close in age with my cousins, but not close in location. We definitely had “quieter” holiday gatherings growing up. My own kids have 10 first cousins, all who live closeby, and all close in age. My sister and I were pregnant at the same time once (kids born 13 days apart). It was my 3rd/last, but her 2nd child (largish gap after #1 due to divorce/remarriage/etc). She’s gone on to have 3 more. Her kids are 13, 7, 5, 2.5, infant. Mine are 11, 9, 7. On my husband’s side, his parents had a grandkid born every year from 2000 to 2007. So there’s 5 cousins on that side too, with one being 5.5 months older than my daughter. They are in the same grade and go to the same school (and are close friends). It is interesting to see how 8 kids all born 10-18 months apart play together but also separate into 2-3 groups when together.
We don’t tend to host gatherings for both sides of the family at once, because 13 kids all together for an indoor thing – yikes!
I was fairly close to my cousins when we were growing up and got together over the summers, with age differences always around 2 or three years older or younger. I had one girl cousin I was quite close to, but she died when I was 11 and she was 13. We moved to the same town as her family about a year after she was gone, and I always wonder if we would have been close as adults if she had lived. We would have gone to the same high school, known some of the same people, maybe even gone to the same colleges. She had a younger brother who was actually closer in age to me, but after she died, her family kind of fell apart, and he didn’t turn out so well. He’s sweet, but lives a completely different sort of life than I do, so I don’t see him much. All my other cousins and I have drifted apart or are too different in age.
My kids will have cousins very close to them because my sister-in-law and I are more or less on the same “baby track.” Four months between our first girls, and there will only be one month between each of our next babies. I am glad for the kids, but I actually DON’T like being pregnant at the same time as other friends or family. I know a lot of people love it and have fun, but it makes me uncomfortable for some reason. I always think about what could go wrong, and worry whether one of us will miscarry, or have a problematic pregnancy/delivery, whether resentments and jealously will build, etc. And if we have different parenting styles or beliefs it just makes more situations where I end up biting my tongue or not having much to say. I just find it awkward – I don’t even like commiserating over shared symptoms or whatever, it makes me feel overly focused on being pregnant. That said, I have one friend I adore whose son is 8 months younger than my daughter, and who is trying for their second right now. I’m really hoping she will get pregnant soon, as I’m 16 weeks along. I don’t care about being pregnant together, but I love that our kids will be so close in age because we have a lot in common and I like thinking we’ll still be able to get our kids together in 10 years and have a great time.
I am not close with my cousins because they are all significantly older than I am. My kids, however, are very close with theirs because the ages are 9 (mine), 7, 5 (cousins), and tw 3 YOS (one mine, one a cousin). Plus they live relatively close (3 hours away by car) so we see them often. I am so glad they are close because it provides more family for my kids. I am an only child so these are their only cousins.
My only girl cousin was a year younger than me. I hated it. We were always in competition. My other cousins were boys, all much older (ten+ years) or much younger (ten+ years. My sisters are 10 and 14 years younger and they have cousins close in age. They aren’t close as adults but as kids it seemed like they had fun together.
On my husband’s side of the family our three kids have six cousins all in their age clump. And each has a cousin of roughly the same age. For my 6 year old, his closest is age cousin is six months younger. My four year old and his closest in age cousin are one month apart. My almost 2 year old is two months younger than her closest in age cousin.
At family stuff they always have someone to play with but it also gets crazy and complicated. Overall I think it’s great that they can all grow up together. :)
I was accidentally pregnant at the same time as my younger sister (with our first babies AND first grandkids in all the families.) I hated it. Mostly because I was due 17 days after her and got to endure a lot of cutesy “heh heh, couldn’t stand to let your little sister have a baby before you so you got knocked up too?” comments (which were so stupid, so innappropriate, and did I mention so stupid? Like, yeah, I got pregnant after my sister and I’m hoping my baby is born early so she doesn’t have the first baby? Is that what we’re going with here? Ugh.) It turned out great though. I love that our kids are so close in age (they ended up being 23 days apart.) I grew up with only 1 local cousin (the others are on the complete opposite side of the country from me so I’ve met them only a handful of times) and he died when we were in our early 20s. I knew him as a kid but I didn’t get to know what our adult relationship would be like. Also, my older sister had her first baby 10 months after my son was born AND my younger sister is pregnant again and due a month before her daughter turns 2. There will be four cousins all within 2 years of each other and I am SO excited to see them grow up knowing each other.
My mother’s side has twelve cousins, the oldest about eight years younger than me (so 30) and the youngest 13. I’m the only one to ever marry or have children. It’s weird and I’m not close with any of them. My dad was an only child. My littles have no cousins on either side. I’m an only child, my husband is the only sibling to marry or have children so far.
My brother and I are the youngest 1st cousins on both sides of the family….by like at least 10 years. So my 2nd cousins are my age and their parents are my 1st cousins (or cousins once removed…whatev).
It worked out although everyone in the family mistakenly refers to my 1st cousins as my aunts/uncles and I have to remind them that this is, in fact, wrong.
My brother and I have stair-step kids: Mine are 8, 5 and 3. His are 7, 6 and 3. I figured out that there is 12 months between my oldest and his oldest, 20 months between his 1st and 2nd children, 10 months between his 2nd and my 2nd kid, 20 months between my 2nd and his 3rd kid, and 4 months between his 3rd and my 3rd kid.
I was always exceedingly jealous of cousin closeness. My sister had two cousins just exactly her age, which is three years older than me, but also my sister’s age so I was just a baby and they mostly ditched me. My other first cousins are all much older than me (via my dad’s older sisters), or much younger (via my mom’s sister).
Now my first cousins through my mom’s sister are 14, 10 and 5. My youngest brother is 15, so he has a built in cousin. My nephew Simon is 9 1/2, so he and my cousin Caleb are close, and my son is 4 months older than my nephew Elliot, and then Elliot is 8 months older than our cousin Camille, so the three of them are quite a little group.
Most recently my sister and my sister in law had baby girls within two months of each other. I love it. And I’m also jealous. Cousins are like siblings only BETTER.