Living Out Loud volume 18: My brother's keeper

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Ian is a little over eight months old now and the ladies at day care have started asking if he's going to have any siblings. There are several other babies in the room who have older brothers or sisters in the neighboring classrooms and I could see that in some cases they are that close together. And while we're interested in Ian having at least one sibling, we're not really ready to start on that quite yet. Both of us have brothers that are at least five years apart from us (his younger, mine both older). It seems normal to us. But as I look at my own life I'm not sure I want to be 38 with a newborn.

Both of my parents have siblings and it's been interesting to see their relationships as they've all grown up and now become of old people. They share a common bond of family and even in their adult interactions you can see currents of how they were as kids. There's the bossy one and the whiny one and the smart ass.

I've even heard someone ask, "do you think I could buy a brother?" after dealing in frustration with the brother fate dealt.

So this brings me to our theme for Living Out Loud. I'm way behind and I'm sure some of you wondered if there would even be an LOL this month. But I knew we wouldn't want it due on July 4 anyways, so I kinda knew I had an extra week to procrastinate. Forgive me, I have a clingy eight-month-old at home so I have to go to Panera to write blog posts.

Tell us about your siblings. Do you wish you had more or less of them? Has your relationship with them changed over the years? For better or for worse? If you're an only child, are you happy about that or do you wish you had a brother or sister around? In either case are there those who fill the space of a sibling you "never had" within your circle of friends? Did your relationship with your siblings affect your ideas on kids of your own? What qualities do you think that make you a good sibling to your family (either actual or chosen)?

Details include:

  • Write something personal about yourself using the previous paragraphs as a guideline. Do not feel that you have to address each prompt above. The spirit of this project is to share something about yourself; I'm just throwing out ideas.
  • Once you have completed your entry and posted it, please email me the link at genie [at] inabottle [dot] org. Remember, if you don't email me, I'm likely to forget to include you in the recap!
  • If you do not have a blog to host your story, you can email me the story directly and I will add it here as a guest post giving you credit. The more the merrier!
  • The due date for entries is Sunday, July 11th (the second Sunday of the month) at 5pm Eastern.
  • Once I have collected all the entries, I will post a wrap-up to list them all and announce a winner. The winner will receive some sort of prize to be determined but all participants will receive fame and glory and a link on our Living Out Loud blogroll.