I had a classmate who was the child of her father's second marriage. She had three or four half-brothers who were all much older than her -- I think the youngest was about 15 or so when we were in first grade. Her father died when she was a baby. In first grade, we were learning about bar graphs and making a graph showing how many of us in the class were the oldest in the family, the youngest, in the middle, or an only child. She got all flustered because she didn't know whether to say she was the youngest or an only child.

Trudy, I'm so happy for your friends and their boys! The wee brother holding his big brother's hand and putting washcloths on his face is breaking my heart, in a good way.

{{{}}} to everyone with family issues. And, java, that story of your kindergarten picture of your family is exactly how I would have expected wee!java to be.

Picspam:

The meerkat costume has arrived. Matilda likes it. So does Emmett.

I have a video of Matilda hopping around the kitchen cackling gleefully, but this computer is uncooperative so it'll have to wait until I can get over to the more docile laptop.

8 kids in one house makes my head spin. My father's many half-sibs were scattered across houses.

My dad's half brother was the middle child in his family of 12 sibs--my grandmother (who was NOT Howard's mother) raised him with the rest of her children.

Not sure how well it went over at the time because the family never talked about it.

msbelle, I totally understand how upsetting this must be for Mac (and you). I hope he can get through the project without any major emotional trauma.

Of course this reminds me that the first week of November, Owen's class is doing a family project and needs to take in a family picture for his class. Not even sure if I can find one of the four of us! I'm always the one taking the pictures and we've lost two laptop hard drives in the last six months with most of our family pictures stored on them. I have CD back ups but they're still well-hidden in an unpacked box in the office.

We only had 7 kids in my family, but baby pictures of the last 2 are scarce.

Meerkat!Matilda is to die for! So cuddly and adorable.

Oh, my. They're re-releasing a CD with Butterfly Kisses on it. Why would you want to do that.

I... I...

Got nuthin'. That's just wrong on a level of wrongness that can't even be defined.

However, Baby Meerkat Matilda shall slay the wrongness.

Matildkat is awesome! (Loki does the meerkat post. I love it.)

I also love my mom, whose birthday it is. I just talked to her for three fun hours. I love that we can do that and not get bored.

The Halloween pictures are finally going to slay me with cuteness.

I went to Target. There were dog Halloween costumes. The dog doesn't know how close he came to being dressed as a lobster. I came to my senses after a few minutes of pondering doggy dignity.

I like your mom too, sara. Not that we've met, or anything.

You people who dress animals in costumes are WEE-YURD. IJS.

Matilda, on the other handle, is a bundle of cuteness. I can't wait to see more pictures of Buffistakinder dressed for Halloween.

Hey, anyone know about the quality of Rosetta Stone language modules?