Colorado Cousins

  Before school, before you know how to choose friends, you have these fabulous built in friends. Your cousins. These kids who are not your brothers or sisters that you see at family gatherings, and on holidays, who are typically around your age.
I idolized one of my cousins for as far back as I can remember, slightly older and oh so cool. I mean LA Gear cool.
  But before hand me down jean jackets and even before epic Barbie dramas, where I'd inevitably get duped, I’d end up with the ‘good Ken’ but her Barbie would die of cancer so the win didn’t really feel like a win… before all of that... I remember marathon games of Monopoly and the occasional slumber party at grandma’s house.
  After hot fudge sundaes, while Grandma and Grandpa were watching Wheel of Fortune, my cousin and I would play dress up. We’d wear silk night gowns and long gloves and drink apple juice out of shot glasses and pretend cocktail picks were cigarettes. And, oh my word, after everyone went to bed we’d get into Grandma’s stash of romance novels and flip through them to find the ‘good parts.’
  (Side Note: Despite our lurid past we both grew up to be respectable women, neither developing a drinking problem and both happily married. And to this day I admire her and think she is super cool and I remember our childhood shenanigans with great fondness.)
  And of course I want Layla to have just as fond memories- and have built in friends to get into trouble with and beg to have sleepovers with despite the fact she is many, many miles from her actual cousins. It’s hard being far from family but I know she will bond with them here and there throughout her life, despite the distance.
  But in the meantime she is lucky to have the most fabulous ‘Colorado’ cousins, aunts and uncles a girl could ask for.
  I am fortunate in the fact my very best friend in the whole world also moved to Colorado, Denver not Fort Collins, but an hour and a half sure beats 16. And  somehow we both got pregnant at the same time and our girls are just 11 days apart.  We joke that they will grow up hating each other, seeing that even at the age of two, they have very different personalities.
  And Layla has very special people who have assumed the roles of aunts and uncles. They spoil her rotten and love her to pieces. It more than holds her over until the next trip back to Illinois.
  Other close girlfriends out here have had their babies within a year or so of Layla too. So far it’s just fighting over whichever toy one of them is holding, but it will be fun to watch them grow up together at birthday parties and BBQs and begging to sleepover, and seeing what mischief awaits them after the parents have gone to bed.