Every couple of weeks we get together with my husband’s side of the family. We all gather at the “grandparents” house. The adults have a chance to catch up and the kids (the two boys that is), run around trying not to be caught. The other afternoon was one such event. My husband’s brother and sister-in-law have two children: a boy who is three and a baby girl who is fourteen weeks. We have a little boy who is two and a half and a baby girl who is ten weeks. The boys are exactly ten months apart in age and the girls are exactly four weeks to the day apart by birth. Sadly, my husband’s other brother and sister were not in attendance. The grandparents especially like to see the granddaughters since they are both at the stage of rapid growth; the girls seem to change almost daily but certainly weekly. We all got together and when we get together food is often involved. The grandparents tend to order out but at this particular non holiday get together, the parents thought it would be easier to just make food. So while the boys played with grandpa and the dads held their baby daughters, the moms and grandma set out to make spaghetti. Grandma normally uses canned sauce and meatballs from the local Italian grocer, but her supplies were low. I offered to make the sauce, something I have become quite adept at in the last nine months. While I was getting the ingredients together with grandma, the other mom (my husband’s sister-in-law), offered to make meatballs. Here we were two young mom’s with our mother-in-law cooking food while the men and boys “played” (the dads were really just talking and holding the babies). It seemed like a scene from an old Italian movie (even though not one of us has any Italian lineage). While we cooked we talked about how fun it would be when are daughter’s were old enough to play together. We marvelled at how their stage of development would be so close that they would most likely always be on the same wavelength (something that the boys struggled with when my son was not quite verbal). We had a nice meal and more wonderful conversation. As we went our separate ways, we (the moms), promised to have a play date with the cousins soon (even if the baby girls just have a staring contest)!
