Everett is now seven, and we recently had a talk with him about how babies are made. However, if you know Everett you will not be surprised to learn that he did most of the talking. We have given him bits of information over time as he has asked for them. Also, on a recent trip to the library he zeroed in on the book Where Willy Went, which doesn’t go into detail but it does explain that the egg and ferns (sperm) need to get together somehow. Once the process started he put it all together himself. We have now quickly moved from the realization phase to the questions phase, most recently “So you and Dad did that? Twice? That’s crazy.”

We have recently had some significant firsts with our children. These may not seem like much, but they could have transformative effects for us as parents.

A few months ago we put a training potty in Teddy & Gwen’s room, and from time to time we would convince them to sit on it. It soon became clear that Gwen wouldn’t share it, so we got a second one for Teddy. Now that the babies are two we have decided to get more serious about toilet training. When Everett was their age we motivated him with Lebkuchen from Aldi. There aren’t any Aldi in Utah, and we haven’t seen Lebkuchen since moving here, but Everett helped us come up with an alternate system: one M&M for pee, two for poop. Once Gwen figured this out she took to it right away. Within about a day she only peed in the potty, except when she was asleep. Teddy tried but didn’t have much success and was seriously upset that he wasn’t getting M&Ms. Nonetheless, we held firm and only gave them out for using the potty, and within a few days Teddy got really good at it as well. After waking up and before bed both of them now ask if they can go.They pee, jump up and exclaim “I want an M&M!” In the last week Teddy has pooped three times, most recently two nights in a row! This may be more graphic detail about bodily functions than we usually report in this blog, and it may seem like an absurd amount of detail about our children, but it is also difficult to describe how much freedom we would feel if they were no longer in diapers.

Speaking of freedom, we are now getting to the point where all three children will play with each other for brief periods of time with minimal supervision from us. The babies have grown to like roughhousing as much as Everett, and have started doing so with him (in addition to Chris of course).

He also taught them to play tag and they will chase him from time to time (Gwen recently started whacking Chris on the shoulder and saying “Tag!”). Recently Melissa started offering to pay Everett to watch the babies in the basement. His rate is $1 for every 20 minutes. Done. This allows the children to have some play time together, Everett to make some money and further develop his sense of responsibility (he is such a patient big brother!), and Melissa to get some things while she is home with them. Like potty training, this probably sounds like a minor achievement but makes a huge difference in our family dynamics.