Editor’s Note: We’re digging into our ample archives to find some great articles you might have missed over the years. This one comes from 2016.

Charlie had to go to the doctor recently. He was not at all pleased about the trip. Our 3 1/2-year-old was in pain and arrived there, with his mom and brother, a hot mess.

Bawling on the floor, he cried like he was getting paid in candy for the tears that hit the floor. It was then that his older brother did something incredibly sweet, genuinely helpful and entirely on his own accord.

He walked over and started asking Charlie questions about Phineas and Ferb.

Phineas and Ferb is something the boys and I watch quite often together as it is as entertaining for adults as it is for children.

“Charlie, who do you think is funnier: Buford or Doctor Doofenshmirtz?”

He thought for a moment and said, “Doof.”

“Charlie, who is funnier: Phineas or Doctor Doofenshmirtz?”

He thought for a second. “Doof.”

The two went on talking about Phineas and Ferb until the doctor called them in.

Brothers: Potential best friend, worst rival

Charlie had gone from zero to crazy meltdown at the drop of a hat but was called back from the edge in the same amount of time just by his big brother making conversation with him. It was something a parent couldn’t have done, but his big brother did it with ease and grace.

In my mind’s eye, I thought about the boys being in their 30s. I hope they are the best of friends when they’re adults. Siblings are one thing; brothers — well, that just has a whole different, deeper and more permanent bond, isn’t it?

I imagine brothers opening up businesses together when they’re older, going on crazy adventures in the backyard or camping with other friends. Brothers, that’s a bond that nothing can break. Siblings are cool and do have a bond, but it certainly varies from family to family. I suspect sisters have the same club as brothers, though. It’s the potential best friend and rival that they’ll have all of their life.

It’s possible what happened in the doctor’s office might have been replicated had they just been siblings and not brothers. Had that been the case it would’ve been cute, too. However, in my “guy” (not to mention, parent) mind, there was something even better about it because it was the two brothers figuring something out and fixing it.

My dad has a younger brother. One time my uncle told me that when he was a child, the only thing he wanted was to be more like his big brother. In response, my dad just shirked and mumbled something smarmy. But that brother bond was still there.

A version of this first appeared on Daddy Mojo. Photo: © luengo_ua / Adobe Stock.

Three years ago, my wife told me the news: we were expecting our second child. We were thrilled. We also knew exactly what to expect. After all, we’d been down this road before.

The famous book What to Expect When You’re Expecting is a classic guide for new parents. It answers all those big questions about pregnancy and the early months. We didn’t need to review it, though. We already had one kid, we knew exactly what to expect. In fact, we were quite convinced Kid No. 2 was going to be simple compared to Kid No. 1.

We couldn’t have been more wrong.

Every child is unique. It took time to adapt to my son’s unique interests and acknowledge that he wasn’t, in fact, a Mini-Me. Yet, the things that make him unique are worth cherishing. In a similar vein, my daughter is not Kid No. 2. She’s not a book we’re re-reading or the second season of a show we’ve already started. She definitely isn’t her big brother. She’s her own unique self, with her own joys and challenges. She is not what we expected. The entire act of parenting multiple children is different than we expected as well.

Different right from the start

When kids are born, they are blobs capable of three things: eating, going in their diapers, and sleeping. Don’t get me wrong, they’re adorable little blobs. To their sleep-deprived, often-struggling parents, those blobs are pure perfection. But again, we knew exactly what to expect with our second one … or did we?

My son was easy to feed, but impossible to get to sleep. I fed him bottles in the middle of the night, and he downed them. I’d also drive him for hours in circles hoping the car would lull him into slumber. My daughter, however, was a great sleeper. She laid down and slept. But feeding … Well, for the first six months of her life my daughter wanted nothing to do with me. To use a quote from the old show Dinosaurs, I was “not-the-Mama.” Never mind that I was the stay-at-home parent, and in charge of feedings and keeping her happy. If I was around there were tears and yells. No bottles. Ever. Especially from that bearded non-the-Mama guy.

Fast forward a bit, and the differences continue. Every time we think we know what’s next, we’re wrong. My son was an early speaker. He was forming entire sentences and stories before age 2. He wasn’t as physically curious, however, especially with things like climbing. My daughter is a climber and a daredevil. She sees a ledge and she instantly jumps. Daddy — who is tolerable now, I’m happy to say, though still apparently less fun than Mom — will catch her. That’s the belief. Sometimes she leaps with eyes closed, saying “Dad.” Just a literal leap of faith. They’re quite terrifying. She sees a ledge and jumps. She spies something small and completely inedible — into the mouth it goes. Why are toddlers so darned self-destructive? On the other hand, she’s only just talking now, at nearly 3. Completely unlike my son. Doctors told us there’s nothing wrong with this at all, she just developed differently.

There’s another dynamic to the entire “what to expect when we clearly don’t know what the heck we’re expecting” phase of our life. We spent months preparing our son for his sister’s arrival. We may have watched the show Daniel Tiger’s Neighborhood a bit too much. There’s a season about the arrival of Daniel’s baby sister and how he copes with it emotionally. Of course, by the time we were ready to go to the hospital, my son told me how excited he was to meet the new baby tiger our family was having. We did explain that his sister would, in fact, be human.

Unique unto themselves but bonded together

The sibling dynamic is unpredictable and remains so in my family. My daughter idolizes her big brother. Even in her not-fond-of-me-the-Dad phase, she worshiped her brother. She imitates him and laughs when he’s around and always wants to be near him. As for my son, it goes in waves. Sometimes she’s OK, sometimes a friend, but often she’s an obstacle. Jealousy and even cruelty towards her appear from time to time, and they create challenges all their own. Even now, we’re never 100 percent sure what to expect on a day-to-day basis, although we always hope that it’ll be a day when the kids get along. When they do get along, it’s the best. There’s no greater image than the two kids hugging and smiling.

If I had a time machine, and could go back to try and explain to myself what to expect with my second child, I’d start by saying: lose all your expectations. I’d tell myself it’s going to be different than it was the first time. My daughter is unique. She’s an individual, and that’s a wonder in itself. I’d also emphasize to past-me that parenting two is different than parenting one, and a heck of a lot more tiring. There’s more to learn, just when you think you’re finally starting to “get” this parenting deal.

A few weeks ago, I finally broke out of the not-the-Mama phase. My daughter wrapped her arms around my neck and gave me a big kiss on my cheek. She told me she loved me. And my son ran over and hugged us both. One thing I knew to expect, and was right — the good times can be twice as good, and filled with twice the love.

Photo: © Evrymmnt / Adobe Stock.

The most frequent question I’ve heard from family and friends over the past month and change has been some variation of “How’s Emory adjusting to being a big brother?”

Nothing remotely related to how I’m doing, or how I’m adjusting to being a father of two. Just, “How’s Emory?”

But I digress.

The answer? It really depends on the day. Overall, he’s handled the transition to big brother status like any other 3 year old would. There’s curiosity in that he is unsure at times of who this new little person in his space is. There’s a combination of excitement and enjoyment in that he loves to tickle her and pull at her hands and feet and, in return, is tickled by her response, or lack thereof. And there have been hints here and there of jealousy. Especially in moments where the routine he’s enjoyed with my wife has now been interrupted by her having to nurse and give attention to his little sister. (Ed. Note: For tips on dealing with an older sibling being jealous of a new baby, check out this article on Very Well Family.)

In the midst of what has been an adjustment period for our family, there have been moments when my wife or I will be holding Eden, and Emory will come and calmly sit with us. And for those 30 seconds or so that he’s still, the reality hits us: We are a family of four. We have two kids now. That reality is extra special for my wife and I because we are both only children. In the stories of our respective lives, growing up with siblings was something neither of us had.

So, in this season of parenthood, we are not only learning how to raise two kids under the age of 3, we are living vicariously through them because they’ll experience a life we didn’t have. As their dad, I’m excited for them to have each other and to grow up together and hopefully share a close brother-sister bond. I always dreamed of having a brother or sister. And while that wasn’t in the cards for me, I’m grateful that my children will know what that feels like.

I’m also interested in seeing how I’ll handle some of the challenges that will surely come with having two kids. How will I deal with the fights and disagreements they’ll have when one of them doesn’t want to share? How will I make sure I’m giving each of them the right amount of attention? Will I discipline Emory differently than Eden? If so, how will that affect the other?

These are some of the things my dad didn’t have to worry about when raising me. These are things I didn’t have to worry about growing up. It was nobody but me. And my wife had the same experience. In seeking advice from our parents, this is the one thing they can’t speak from experience on. We’ll just have to figure it out. And yes, we have plenty of friends and family who are parents who grew up with siblings, but when my wife and I are in the house and we have two screaming kids running around, we’ll have to figure it out on our own.

Emory’s going to be a great big brother. I’m actually envious of him. As he figures out his new role, I’ll be right there with him, learning too.

Photo: © sonsedskaya / Adobe Stock.

My 5-year-old stares at me, not really comprehending what this means. Unless it’s candy or a shot to my balls, he doesn’t have much use for it. But my 11-year-old son, he knows exactly what it means and his face falls.

“Dad …” he begins.

“No,” I say. “Don’t dad me. Don’t even begin to think I’m changing this. Your mom and I are going to see a movie and your sister is babysitting.”

“But …”

“No buts.”

He looks at me hard, and his lips go tight. But then he accepts it.

My wife looks wonderful today. She smiles in a way that she did before we had children. It’s more carefree, worry lines erased from a creased brow. In jeans and a T-shirt, she has never looked so beautiful.

Budget babysitting for parental playtime

We will be gone just long enough to see a movie. We have completed some test runs like grocery store trips for 30 minutes. The house wasn’t burned down by the time we came back. But that was only for a short time, and we were no more than five minutes away. This is her first big test and it will probably be OK. At this point, I’ll take a probably.

For the last 12 years, my wife and I have hobbled together date nights on a shoestring budget. You have to put in the amount that a movie costs, for dinner, and then throw 60 bucks on top of that for the sitter. I call it the date night surcharge. And for 12 years, we’ve paid it. We have cut dates short because we didn’t want to increase the surcharge. How much for an extra hour? A car payment, and a year’s worth of college tuition.

My daughter, Little Hoss, bounces around the living room. She’s almost grown up, she has told me a thousand times. She can handle it, she can control it. A jump from the couch to my chair, and I can hear a piece of wood break. Or, to be more accurate, I ignore that piece of wood breaking and pretend it didn’t happen.

I need this time with my wife. We need it. Things get frantic with a family. You have to run to practices, my wife has to work late, the water heater bursts in the basement. Some weeks, I give my wife a kiss on Monday morning and don’t see her again until Friday. So date night isn’t just something fun. No. Date night is a chance to forget that we have three money suckers that demand only the brand name Oreos. Those who babysit get the brand name; those who are babysat get saltines smeared with cream cheese.

You have your orders, follow them

I line all three kids up in front of me and give them the most dad speech I have ever given.

“Little Hoss is in charge. That means what she says, goes. Got it?”

“Yes,” they all say but Little Hoss says it with a lot more enthusiasm.

“That means if she says it’s time to clean up, you clean up. If it’s time for a snack, she gets it. Got it?”

“But, dad,” my son says. “What if an airplane crashes into our house and she’s stuck in the bathroom? Then the fire department can’t get in because she can’t answer the door. How are we going to get a snack then?”

This is what my boy does. He is trying to find a way to make this not happen like his sister is some sort of monster that wouldn’t give him a snack. So he makes up the worst-case scenario to try to get me to change my mind. But it’s not going to work. I’m going to do some hardcore hand-holding today with my wife and nothing is going to stop that.

“If that happens, you can get your own snack. And let’s be reasonable. Your sister is going to take good care of you.”

“No, she won’t,” he says.

“Boy, don’t push it.”

I grab my keys and my wife and I head to the door. I give one more reminder.

“Remember! Little Hoss is in charge!” I yell.

And softly, as if almost whispered, I hear my daughter respond.

“Suck it,” she says. And I’m pretty sure she is manically laughing.

I pause. This is going to end badly.

Fuck it, I have insurance. My wife and I leave for our movie.

A version of ‘Babysitting Little Brothers’ first appeared on Hossman At-Home. Fear of babysitting sister photo: © luismolinero / Adobe Stock.

The distance between them is a mix of years and meters, measures in degrees of space and sound and time. Two boys joined at the bloodline, bound by fate and floor plans, my sons have shared a bedroom from the beginning, their bunked barracks always a common ground. That changed last week.

For the first time ever, the boys are each in their own room. They believe they have gained freedom and independence, which is true. But I cannot help fear a paradise lost in nightly confidants and the whispers between them. Also, a place for potential guests should any care to visit.

This change in the dynamic of our family feels compounded by another shift, the thinning of a friendship. One of the boys is facing changes at school and we feel the effects at home, relationships being connected as they are.

Granted, friendships are fluid. Even the best can grow stretched or frayed, only held together by past adventures and Facebook. Relationships exist in a state of flux.

Over the years, our boys have bounced in and out of social circles, playdates to sleepovers to group chats always pinging. However, the Venn diagram between them has stayed a steady waxing, rarely casting out into the waning.

But it is happening now. A friend that was is a friend no more, despite my wife and I pleading to the contrary. Our case built against mob mentality, suspecting the other child a victim of it.

Or perhaps it is the other way around. We only know one version of one side, pulled reluctantly through sighs and deep, deep eye-rolls.

It could be this is the way life is supposed to work, bonds breaking as they strain across calendars not yet tethered by the archives of social media. All parties free to expand and explore despite the confines of relative history, now replaced with new paths and nods in the lunchroom. After all, it’s their life, no matter how much we like the other parents.

Therein lies the lesson. What happens in the world gets practice in the home, and while temptation waits around every corner to apply our experience to their discovery, nobody benefits when we do the work for them. Some problems solve themselves, regardless of the making.

At home, our boys didn’t lose any sleep once the new arrangement was decided, dividing bedding and decor in the most amicable split ever. Neither, it seemed, cared as much for the stuff they shared as for the room they needed. All they wanted was privacy and possibility. All they wanted was freedom to expand and explore with the comfort of relatives and history sleeping softly in the room next door.

There are diagrams here, too: sibling dynamics, rivalries and overlaps of everything. Yet since the move the boys have played together more than they did in the countless months that preceded it. Perhaps it is the optics of option, spending time together by choice rather than sentence. Perhaps it is the comfort of commonality.

The distance between them is a mix of years and meters, but it is closer where it matters.

Bedroom bunk bed photo: larkin.family on Foter.com / CC BY-NC

A few months back, my oldest son had a full week of trips with his middle school. He needed lunch for these trips and asked if he could buy bacon, egg and cheese sandwiches for his trips. He’s a true New Yorker already — I love it!

I didn’t think much of it and hooked him up. My 5-year-old caught wind of this and started asking for the same thing. I told him no but also promised that when he had a school trip, we would do the same thing.

A month later, at 6:30 one morning, my 5-year-old walked up to me and said, “Dad, do you remember?”

I had no idea what he was talking about and basically kept pushing him away. It was too early to play a guessing game. Then my wife hooked me up.

She said, “He has to be like the other, he has a school trip today!”

I wiped the crust out of my eye while trying to figure out this cryptic message until it finally hit me. He wanted a bacon, egg and cheese sandwich for his trip just like his older brother had.

Lesson 1: Kids don’t forget

I told my youngest son I would get him a sandwich in hope that a month later he would forget. That didn’t work out well.

I don’t know how kids do it but they remember everything, so be mindful of what you promise or say to them because one day they will ask you about it. He loves those sandwiches, wants to be like his older brother, and only forgets the instructions I give him on the daily. In short, he can’t remember shit that I tell him but can remember when his brother gets something he also wants. Damn kids.

Lesson 2: All siblings must have equal rights

When you have kids, buying only one of them anything rarely works.

If you buy one of your kids something, the other(s) will also want something. It never fails. Sometimes it’s not the same thing, but they ALWAYS want something.

All households must have equal rights when it comes to buying things for your kids. They will remind you that big bro or big sis got something and so should he. It gets worse when it’s an older child fighting for what the younger child got.

You will be made to feel like you’re breaking the law if you don’t hook everyone up. You will be nagged and hear lines like, “But he got it, I want it.” It gets annoying but the kid is right.

A version of this first appeared on Cool4Dads.

It is evening. Townes Van Zandt is playing through a scattering of speakers, each calibrated just right to replicate the scratch of a weary needle upon the endless spin of a tattered record, despite the glow of technology designed to hide just that. The song, whiskey-laden perfection sweetened with melancholy twang, is a digital version played through a popular app on a pricy computer, not an album sleeve in sight. I sold my phonograph over a decade ago, my stack of wax shortly after, and while I have regretted it ever since, I have yet to partake in the vinyl renaissance of modern-day collectors — I know a rabbit hole when I see one, and rabbits get expensive real quick.

It is still evening. The sky is pink swirls of cotton candy against a canvas of sun-faded blues. The birds are flying this way and that, singing their goodbyes to another day of whatever they do, one last look at the world before the nest takes them in, warm with worm and weather. The streetlights flicker on as darkness finds them, and I think: This is the closest we will ever be to stars.

More evening. The dogs are done wanting walks and resigned themselves to shedding on the couch. The cats take the pillows, and everyone is happy, if not somewhat itchy. The soundtrack gives way to a waking television, too many pixels suddenly stirring and stretching its stories in shameless fashion. The screen is bigger than a breadbox and nobody knows what that means anymore. There are games and politics and animated silliness, often at the same time. I think a beer sounds good.

Now for the part of the evening we are all well into, and my mind has turned to tomorrow. There are calendars to check, meetings to confirm, deadlines, appointments, lunches to pack and that beer to finish. The dogs go out once more, another look like the birds before them, but with 100 percent more sniffing. The cats will wait an hour to want my attention, maybe two. The TV is off, music back on, Coltrane an echo down the hallway. I put on my pajamas, brush my teeth, and try to decide which of the four books I’m currently reading gets the nod for the night.

It is late enough, my bedtime. The dishes are done, dinner just a memory buried beneath an avalanche of ice cream, the sprinklers damp and dripping, nothing left of the candles but the dying dance of a delicate wisp. The house breathes quiet save a lonely saxophone over a snoring dog, the chime of another bottle clinking upon its old neighbor as they settle in the recycling, anxious for a life reborn, and somewhere, where it shouldn’t be, the soft sound of two boys laughing.

I start to stick my head in the door, again, to remind them they went to bed hours ago, and that there is school in the morning. I think about raising my voice and telling them, again, to take down their forts, put their blankets back on their beds, and go to sleep. But I stop myself. It won’t be long before they are in different rooms, then different homes, perhaps separate states or oceans between them, and what if there are no forts in those places without each other? After all, it’s a two-man job (apparently). For tonight they are fortified, mess and tired their only consequence. That seems fair enough.

I don’t even say good night. Instead I crawl into bed, my wife sleeping with a book like a dog-eared teddy bear, the nightstand sparkling with a pile of coins, a growing shrine to pocket ghosts. All that’s left is Coltrane in the distance, and the stars feel somehow nearer.

This sleepover extravaganza left a memory that lingered like a hangover. Turns out that staying awake all night isn’t what it used to be.

The cards were admittedly sloppy, competing as they were against time best spent on anything but; however, the sentiment therein was genuine and heartfelt, if not misspelled. That my youngest son, freshly turned to 11, didn’t balk for a moment when I suggested he write thank-you cards was immediately chalked as a victory in this scenario, whereas grammar and penmanship were the battles to be fought another day.

We were working on gratitude in the medium of manners, an art molded with squirming bits of putty, sketched from example and framed by context. Painful lessons may have their place, but this place was not one of them. This was thanks and happy tidings, the type of lessons that shape a foundation, and I never felt a doubt as he scribbled salutations in pencil, the eraser, apparently, ornamental. His attitude, a grasping of empathy with regard to one’s time and giving, was more than enough.

Or, it could be, I was too damned tired to put up a fight.

In theory, we were both still recovering from his birthday party, which was a sleepover extravaganza featuring 12 of his classmates — a dozen tween boys, plus my own two sons, turning our living room into a clown car — a memory that lingered like a hangover. This, despite his falling asleep before the last guest left the next afternoon, then staying that way for 17 hours. I, too, had fallen asleep earlier than normal in the sleepover aftermath, 7 p.m. on a Saturday; but while he had jumped out of bed, bounced straight to his basketball game, and then to the park for no apparent reason, I awoke like Sunday mornings long forgotten, to the bruising pain of a body beaten and a mind even more so. Turns out that staying awake all night isn’t what it used to be.

When I was a kid, staying up with my friends entailed countless video games, comic books and hoping to see someone naked on basic cable. As I got older, the hours shifted in emphasis to drinking games, discussing books and hoping to see someone naked on basic cable. These days, however, my drinking is less competitive, my books still being written, and I have HBO. I’m in bed by midnight.

They had YouTube.

The laughter from the darkness had me convinced that the only things separating my pillow from the living embodiment of William Golding’s words were a wall of wood and plaster, and a bookshelf full of distraction. Yet, upon my hourly trips down the hallway, it wasn’t “Lord of the Flies” that greeted me, but rather a yellow glow in the night, zapless, with a boy on the screen doing crafts in a mine, and 28 eyes upon it. Then I would return to my bed, wide awake, alone, and far too cranky, my wife having left hours earlier to sleep in the car so as to have something resembling rest before her 6 a.m. workday, and I spoke aloud the mantra of a sleepover parent: “I was a kid once. I was a kid once. I was a kid once.”

Then I tweeted it.

Finally, at 5 a.m., desperately hoping that our eyes might shut before the day yawned open, I took away the last of the electronics, gave one more menacing monologue, stern and steady, then retired again, aching and heavy with fatigue. The night was worn, my spirit weary, and it wasn’t long before the morning mocked us.

And we did.

It rained hard the next day, harder, in fact, than I have ever seen before. The boys gathered, badly rested and full of good humor, drying themselves in front of the fire after a wet morning in thick grass, plucking at guitars, petting dogs and cheering my son as he opened the gifts they gave him. Behind each there was a joke, a reason or a story, and it was that, a perfect storm of tweens, that he marked upon as he signed the cards to thank them, a smile hand-delivered or stamps for far relations. He wrote them there, warm and happy, a birthday blur at the kitchen table, still sticky with maple.

As I sit here typing, I was just thinking that there is nothing more heartwarming than brotherly love. You know, that bond brothers have. There is just something so very special about —

Hang on. Someone’s yelling in the living room …

OK, I’m back. It seems Carter had decided to help Dad by picking up the toys. This included the two that his brother happened to be playing with at the time. Then after voicing his displeasure, Gavin decided to retrieve said playthings from the toybox and Carter was upset with having his work undone.

Where was I … oh yeah, brotherly love.

It’s not too surprising that my boys sometimes get on each other’s nerves. My brother Jared and I (he is five years my junior) used to fight like cats and dogs. But we also spent our share of quality time together as well. When I look back to some of the best times I had growing up, he was right beside me.

Living in different parts of the world now, I don’t see him that often. Usually it’s once a year, in the fall, when I make a trip to the Twin Cities. It doesn’t matter though because we crack open a beer, and pick up right where we left off the year before.

That’s what I want for my sons. Not the distance between them, but the ability to be comfortable enough with their relationship to skip the awkward formalities that a long time of being apart sometimes brings.

The first 12 months watching my twin sons interact was difficult because it was far from what I expected. My sons were getting bigger and older, and seemed to ignore each other completely. They knew the other existed, but they really didn’t seem to care.

Did they realize that it wasn’t their brother who was going to feed them, or change them, or put them down for a nap? Had it dawned on them that one was as helpless as the other?

There were times when one would cry (normally Carter) and their sibling would give them that look, almost saying, “Dude! What the hell is wrong with you?”

Before they were born I imagined two best friends coming into the world at the same time. (For example, my friend Erik and I were born just 2 days apart). I was all excited about the “secret twin language,” even joking with the idea of videotaping it, and asking them what they said to each other years from now. (It’s an old Steven Wright Joke).

None of that really happened until they started getting more mobile. Now here it is, a year later, and they spend the day chasing one another. They are both learning what their independent interests are and have no issue playing alone, but it seems that one will gravitate toward the other as the day wears on.

Last week, Gavin tripped while running into the living room and landed right on one of his Matchbox cars. He had the print of the hood of the car right under his eye to prove it. My wife comforted him as he cried his tale of woe and Carter made a point to come over and make sure he was OK. It’s probably the first sign of compassion we’ve seen either of them show. It warms your heart.

My boys are growing up, and I have to accept that. What makes it a little easier is knowing that they are growing up together – brothers always.

A version of this first appeared on Double Trouble Daddy.

Photo credit of brothers: Capri & William III via photopin (license)