The Bossy Queen of the Colour Black

Cousins are pretty cool.

On Friday, my sister, BIL and their two kids arrived to spend the weekend. It’s so much fun to watch Eva learning to interact with her cousins. Growing up, I was (and still am) close to my cousin’s and I want that to be the same for my kiddos. She has four cousins that were all born within 11 months of her so she will have lots of playmates to grow up with.

This weekend, Eva and Baby A had lots of fun practicing for the many many sleepovers that they’ll have together in the future.

It is so hard to believe that in 6 short months, they have gone from looking like this together …

to like this.

And, yes, we are those Moms. You know? The ones who buy matching outfits for their kids and make them wear them when they are together.

On Sunday afternoon, Nana and Papa, Aunt Shelley, Uncle Tim, and cousin Mitchell came over for dinner, too.

And as if that wasn’t enough, we were lucky enough to have even more family time today.

My cousin Carrie came to visit Eva and I. She is my closest cousin in age. In fact, she and I are about the same distance in age as Eva and Baby A are. It makes me excited to think that they will get to have a relationship like the one we shared growing up.

(What? It’s not still January?)

It was so much fun spending the day with Carrie. We chatted, went out for fish and chips, and discussed (and watched) our common love: Harry Potter.

She even came with gifts for Evalyn.

Um, yeah. Eva does like Nutella.

It’s quite fitting that Carrie brought me Nutella since my love for the stuff originated with her. My grandma used to always have it in the cupboard and that’s the only time I really ate it as a kid. On my toast at Grandmas. With Carrie. Now I scrap the toast and just eat it with a spoon. Or my finger.

Nutella’s not the only good thing that came from my friendship with Carrie. She also helped me develop my strong leadership skills as a child. You see... she was very shy. I was not so much very shy. And so we worked well as a team. Right Carrie? So well, in fact, that we have a home video of Carrie and I putting on a drama production entitled “The Bossy Queen of the Colour Black” for our parents.

Basically, the story goes like. I am the Queen. I wear black. I am bossy. She is my servant. She says a total of zero words through the entire video. Only the occasional giggle escapes her lips. I tell her what to do. She does it. Repeat. Repeat. Repeat. The end.

Carrie is also to blame for my obsession with getting my back tickled as we used to spend many a night “drawing” on each other’s backs when we had sleep overs.

My insanely amazing dance moves may or may not have originated in Carrie’s bedroom as we spent hours and hours and hours lip sinking and dancing to “Footloose”.

I can only hope that in 20-30 years from now, Eva and Baby A will be visiting each other. Laughing together. Seeing each other’s kids grow up.

And most importantly, eating Nutella with a spoon.

(There you go Carrie. You succeeded. You got yourself a blog post. Are you proud?)