it's hard out here for a hermit

been talking to my family more than i think i ever have in my whole life entire.

we did a lot of video chatting over xmas, wherein i showcased the belly on pixelated videocams for roomsfull of people we love who we did not travel out of state to go see. hooray! for high technology keeping yr nerdy a$$ at home.

been thinking lately abt the kids thing, namely how many? are we committed to having? it took us 9 yrs together to have kid the first... and i've always thought i would have zero, or two. 'tawk amongst yahselves' is my motto. LOL! maybe we'll get away with one, like if kaiju turns out to be a really self-amusing kid who learns to read at 3 and/or spends his time playing outside in the yard with other neighborhood kids. but i've never thought i'd have the attention span for one child.

at the same time, i can totally see the benefits of a larger family. i am one of four, and i HEART my sibs to death. it was a lot of fun growing up in our house. plus, since the little ones are 7 and 10 yrs younger than me, i got a chance to babysit, read stories, learn responsibility and participate in their upbringing a little. we weren't primary caretakers by any means, but i did get a chance to see how our age spread made it possible for my mom to put some kid-sustained systems in place that helped things run more smoothly.

also in preparing for our child to enter the world, be are becoming even more cognizant that we're building and adding onto longer-standing and extended structures when we procreate and move and marry and make life decisions like that. me and the hubster tend to isolate ourselves, but with a bun coming we're thinking about it in a different way. how far do we live from the rest of the extended fam? how often are the cousins going to see each other? dh only has one brother, but they were raised really close to their 4 cousins; now they are all adults and it's really cute to see how important they are in each others' lives, even tho they're spread out over the NY tri-state area. there were four of us siblings but we were isolated from extended family and only saw any given set of cousins like once a year when we made holiday-related road trips. now we're adults and only just now getting back into sporadic email contact.

kaiju will have a 1st cousin almost exactly 1 yr older than him; a 2nd cousin the same exact age. they will all live in 3 different states... LI, NJ, and we're the farflung ones in MD. what will their relationships be like? it's sobering to know that that's entirely up to us.