Sunday, May 30, 2010

Bonding with Cousins

Gaz played with her third-cousin here at the parents place today. Also yesterday. Cousin is equivalent in age, and they have a good rapport. Heck, yesterday, she pitched a total fit when asked to leave their house. But she was pretty good today; Gaz gave her one of the Polly Pockets dolls she recently got, and cousin gave her some Barbie jewelry, so they could be best friends forever.

It's good when Gaz bonds with her family. She's got first cousins who she doesn't see very often, but they're not entirely compatible; we always see them together and they have their own sibling dynamic and none of them are directly equivalent in age. She loves them, but doesn't relate to them quite as well. Third cousin, though, it was like gangbusters.

I don't know that I ever connected with any of my relatives like that. I get along with everybody, but I never entirely bonded, as friends. There's a few folks I would have enjoyed getting closer to, I suppose, but everybody's so spread out these days. Ah, well. Even still, it was really cool to see them getting so close.

Actually, me and third cousin's father, my second cousin, we got to talk a lot while the girls were playing, and honestly, I'm really glad I got to talk to him. Perhaps I will be bonding with relatives after all.

But this blog isn't about me, it's about Gaz. So she got to do a lot of things this trip; it's been a very successful father-daughter trip out to the parents. I think we've gotten along pretty well, even through a couple of melt-downs. We've gone through worse, and I think she's pretty pleased with how it turned out, as well. We'll be able to tell tomorrow, though, once we got back to LWG and Gaz tells her story of the weekend.

PS: we went to a Chinese buffet place for dinner, and one of the waitresses really took a liking to Gaz and third cousin, even tickling them when they were playing. Gaz seems to have that effect on people; she kept showing off her Polly Pocket and her jewelry and just smiling like an angel. She's awesome like that.

2 comments:

Niki said...

I'm sure it was nice to have some daddy-daughter time, even if there were a efw bumps in the road.
I'm lucky that my BFF is my cousin cause we've been together our whole lives.

Mark said...

This was the first time Gaz could recall meeting ThirdCousin, even though they've met twice in infancy/toddlerhood.