Monday, October 25, 2010

Cousins, cousins, and coming soon, even more cousins!

Over the weekend Renee and I went to my cousin Rachel and her fiance Lindsey's baby shower.  They're going to have a baby boy, and his name is going to be Jaden!  There are actually three babies due on that side of my family (my cousin Jennifer is having a girl and my cousin Maryann is having a surprise), and they are all due within the next 3 months!!!

Renee and her great-grandma Ferguson.  And that's Rachel and Lindsey in the background :D

Renee and her cousin Ashley at Rachel and Lindsey's baby shower.

On top of that, Jeff's brother Eric and his girlfriend Veronica just had a baby boy, Baby Eric, a month ago.

Me holding baby Eric, and Veronica's cousin holding Renee.
All of these babies being born are in some form or another cousins to Renee.  So, I started thinking about how many cousins she actually has?  And the answer is A LOT!!!  I had to make an Excel spreadsheet to count them all and keep their exact cousin titles straight, and these are just the ones that we stay in contact with.

Here's the count:
1st Cousins: 1
1st Cousins, once removed:  25 
2nd Cousins: 4, soon to be 7
1st Cousins, twice removed: 2
2nd Cousins, once removed: 3
3rd Cousins: 2

Grand Total: 37, soon to be 40 cousins!!!  Eight of which will actually be around the right age for Renee to play with at family functions.  Pretty crazy!  And there are more out there, many more, we just don't keep in contact with them, so I'm not counting them.

Oh, and if you're not quite sure what all the cousin terminology (once removed, twice removed, etc.) means, check out this site:  Cousin Relationships (I'm always explaining it to people, but this site has a good visual lesson).
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3 comments:

  1. The Bowers!October 26, 2010 at 9:20 AM

    What a priceless picture of R with her great grandma!

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  2. KarenMay 30, 2011 at 5:37 PM

    The cousin relationships chart is very helpful. If there are only first cousins, then one needn't say, "first," right? "First" is only needed if there are going to be other cousin relationships, yes? For example, if I was only going to talk about Renee and Little Eric, I could simply say they are cousins without using the further designation of "first." Am I correct? Since I used to think of myself as having a small family, I never had reason to get familiar with cousin relationships. Thanks for broadening my education, Kelly! My, what a big family you have!

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  3. KellyMay 31, 2011 at 4:20 PM

    Karen - Until Renee was born, I referred to any level of cousin simply as "cousin" and never distinguished between 1st, 2nd, etc. And now I only use that terminology to help non-family members understand my huge family a bit more. Although, it's probably more confusing than anything!! But, yes, you are right in that you don't need to say "first", Renee and Little Eric are just cousins :D

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