Cousins

Raindrop met her new 20 day old baby cousin from Chicago yesterday. She studied her for several minutes, and looked at me for reassurance when she cried. But it seemed like a positive experience until I had the privilege of holding my baby niece. Suddenly Raindrop was not okay. I've never really seen her quite as blatantly possessive before. Hints of it when I held her other baby cousin in Illinois, but she was sick and out of sorts then, so I didn't attribute her fussing strictly to that. A little later when Christopher Robin and Peanut Butter were admiring the baby and fussing over her, Raindrop looked jealously from them to me and back again, over and over. It was as if she was shocked to see the ones who had always showered her with adoration giving that kind of attention to someone else. Only seven months old, but she's already understanding her established place in our family, and she will probably always be our baby of the family.

Beside her cousin, Raindrop is a giant baby. Everything about her is large. My sister's daughter is beautiful...dark, and looks so much like her mother, only different, too. I can't describe how exciting it is to me to see my sister with her own little one. And to think of Raindrop and her little cousin in a few years, running around together as two happy playmates.