ON BEING A BIG BROTHER

Truett was never the classic big brother type. He’s very chill, almost to the point of having too much chill.

He doesn’t fuss over the babies like Kirsten does, or babytalk them like Finn does with Hayley. When he was younger, he would mostly be doing his own thing. I’d ask if he wanted to hang out with his baby and he’d be like “No thanks!” because “babies are boring” and fair enough, that is an accurate assessment.

Look at this squishy face trying to figure out what to do with his boring baby sister.

When he started preschool and got really bad separation anxiety, he would look to Kirsten for support because she’s the badass who waved bye and skipped into school at 18 months like it wasn’t even a thing.

::

But now that he’s bigger and the other kids are bigger, Tru has grown to become a pretty rad big brother. He watches out for them and is affectionate in his non-committal manner.

One time, he was supposed to present something together with Kirsten and she was self conscious, like “Korkor, you do it, I’m shy” and Tru was equally reluctant but eventually he was all “Ok fine fine I’ll do it, don’t worry” and he did a fine job.

He’s still not the giving orders to everyone sort but it’s clear that all the other kids think he’s some kind of awesome.

These days, when the two younger boys are up to no good and I have a word with them, they’re usually just like “Ok mom, message received” and they run off but when Truett is even a little disappointed with them, their little hearts get broken and they immediately start to tear.

::

Tru recently shifted up to the top bunk by himself and this was a huge blow to Finn, whose favourite part about sleeping was snuggling with his big brother.

In fact, they would all sleep like this together on the bottom bunk if they could.

“We’re really sleeping, mom!” they would say, as if I was born yesterday. We all know that this is a setup for a play all night without sleep situation.

So now Tru gets the top bunk and every night, Finn would climb up and squeeze in next to him, which is sweet, but very uncomfortable for them both. At first, Truett tried to accommodate the squeeze but he would sleep poorly and end up being really tired the next day.

I told Finn he couldn’t go up to Tru’s bed anymore and he was so sad, like “I miss korkor and I can always sleep better next to him” but he knew it was rough on Tru so he tried his best not to go up for some snuggle time.

Few nights ago, he relapsed and slept-climbed his way up on autopilot. Instead of just shooing his brother away, he brought him down and told him he would snuggle next to him until he fell asleep. And he did. He stayed next to him until Finn fell asleep, then covered him with a blanket and went back up. By then, he was wide awake and couldn’t fall back asleep for the next hour. The craziest thing was that when he told me the next morning, he wasn’t even annoyed like a person who just had his sleep disturbed would be.

This is exactly why the smaller kids adore him and would do anything he says. Especially Finn. As far as Finn is concerned, Truett is the finest specimen of a human being in the history of humankind.