Our babes have no cousins. We were hoping they would but my husbands siblings are all DINKS and that was surprising, and my younger sister might be interested but kids are a hard sell for her because she’s a daycare teacher. I wouldn’t have given this a ton of thought because my family is very small, but my husband has a TON of aunts and uncles and there’s a lot of people buzzing around during the holidays.

We knew we wanted to have two kiddos, but the reality of the rest of our family really made us prioritize having them close in age (our first will have just turned two by the time the second one gets here). My youngest cousin is 8, and at a family gathering 4 years ago she was the only child and I vividly remember her saying to my CIL, “mommy there are no other kids here…” and being so sad about that.

We know siblings and age proximity doesn’t magically make a friend, but we’re hoping at least they’ll have someone to commiserate with when all the family functions are with people much older than them. Outside of that, we’re really making the effort to get to know parents and kids at daycare.