It sounds crazy town when I say the boys don’t fight. With each other. I have never once heard my children call each other buttface, which is something my own mother could never claim. Now with us there is still plenty of sass, particularly Nate’s response to every request with the ol’, “OK Boomer,” spoken with a Swedish lilt.
The lack of brotherly bickering is based on our pure and unwavering parental discipline and focus, since the first moments of their babyhood, on shear luck.
One of the sweetest things about lockdown has been listening to the boys in their beds at night. We put them to bed and then they chat it up, sometimes for almost an hour. After thirteen weeks with just themselves as company, it’s absolutely astonishing they have anything left to say to each other. But they do. And we have no idea what it is. We can just hear their little voices through the floor in our room.
Earlier this week I was in my barn office with the window open. I saw the boys walking together across the lawn to do their chicken chores, oblivious that I was watching.
As they round the barn I hear Nate say, “How many rats do you think lived inside the treehouse?” And without a moment’s hesitation, Jake replies, “Three. Maybe four.”
So sweet.