Cousin love

I have very fond memories of spending time with my cousins when I was a kid.  This was a huge accomplishment and gift since they all lived in Japan and we saw each other only every five years or so.  (Though when we went to Japan we were there for a couple of months and so saw them a few times during the span of our vacations.)

There is something mysterious and wonderful about the bonds of cousins.  There is a familiarity to relating which is similar to that which exists with siblings, but I am convinced somehow the ease is simpler...more fast.  In a way that is rarer amongst siblings.

Our guys are the oldest of their cousins (Cap and I are, too, of our respective cousin clans) and with their maturation into tweendom and cusp-of-tweendom, their appreciation and enjoyment of their cousins has deepened.  They love spending time with them and find them much less annoying as they have developed the capacities to deal with the unpredictability of young children (three of their cousins have been concurrently maturing, as well).