Boys of Summer and Cohen's Birthday

Five years from today, or June 2014, I will have a son turning 6, a son who just turned 7, a son about to turn 5, a son who is staring 9 in the face, a crazy wife on lots of Meds and hopefully, just hopefully a Daughter turning 2 or 3.


Summer is almost half over if you can call it that. I have lived in Utah for almost 30 years and can't remember a spring holding on this long or a Summer being this rainy. Luckily my work and school schedule lets us be pretty jump and go so we can catch the few hours of sun in a day. I hope that because we got a late jump on Summer it will extend into Sept or Oct. So here is a break down of our Morning which is pretty routine unless we have a Doctor's appointment.

The Boys come in and starting saying breakfast at which then one of us goes downstairs and gets the following 2 sippy cups and 2 bags of Cheerios or Kix. Three Diapers are changed.

Generally we put all of them in the shower with me but thought that that picture would be to "graphic".

The Boys generally go in with Daddy because usually mommy needs the 15 minutes of alone time. At this point we get them ready for the day tag team. Then I work on the computer while Stephanie gets ready.

This summer I have decided to try and be better at golf and the boys have been coming along as well.

Noah and Ian are starting to play well together, I'm not very excited about going through the fighting stage again next year with Cohen but maybe it will be easier because Noah and Ian are doing well together we will see.

When one of the boys has a Doctor's appointments or Stephanie has a Prego appointment it is easier if one or two of them stay home. Three kids at the Doctors office is a little too difficult. this is cool because it give us some one on one time with each of the boys. When Noah and I are home we generally build something, play hide and seek, have snacks, play soccer if the weather is good, or just make silly faces for the camera.

Once or twice week we try and get the family out doing something together. Lately it has been driving around looking at and in houses for the best fit for us. We try and make it to the Dinosaur Museum, Scera, Park, Cousins, G&G house whenever we can.

Our first pet experiment ended very bad and super fast, about a week after we took this picture, both of these fish were "flushed".

Those of you that know Stephanie, know that when she does something, she usually does it um well, not over the top just a step beyond nice . It's taken five years and lots of holidays to recognize that this is something that she needs and loves to do. I'm still working on being helpful and less concerned about the finance side of things, emphasis on "working". The weather cooperated for Cohen's Birthday can bee seen in full detail here.

My name is Spencer, and I am a father of four boys in four years.

Sunday's

Sunday's are interesting and it doesn't matter what time we get up to go to church we still have trouble getting their on time.

9:20 a.m. "Spencer, wake up its time to give the boys a bath."

We are a the point now where we just have a big man shower or bath. Only bad thing about this process is that between the four of us, four of us pee in the shower or tub. Generally the man shower runs much more smoothly and Stephanie will take Cohen out first and get him ready then I will bring the other two boys out and get them ready.

The man tub is much more difficult, We generally build stuff in the bathtub and play around a lot more. We have those water pirate sets that you can create boats and treasure maps on the side of the tub and stuff.

9:50 "It's time t get out of the tub"

We continue to play a few more minutes, the man tub only happens on Sundays so we all take advantage of that time.

10:10 "I'm serious, we are going to be late you need to get the boys out".

It generally takes about 20 minutes to get all three boys ready to go, not including shoes and coats and loading them into the car. This process includes lotion everywhere, special lotion on rashy spots (Cohen and Ian), diapers, pullups, undershirts, shirts, pants, socks, teeth brushing, gummies(a daily vitamin of some sort), hair and ties.

10:30 "Can you take them downstairs and let me finish getting ready".

It takes me two minutes to get ready and then I proceed to take the boys downstairs.

10:32 "Seriously, can you take them downstairs and feed them."

Cohen gets a bottle and Noah and Ian generally share a bagel with cream cheese and have a sippy cup full of milk and maybe some fruit. Depending on the day the two oldest boys sit down quietly and eat at the table.

10:42 "I'll be down in just a minute"

I proceed to put shoes and coats on, It doesn't take to long if all things are in the proper place, including boys.

10:47 "I know, I know it starts in ten minutes".

We have a full size SUV and the second row is full of car seats and the back seat has the stroller and some other stuff. Ian always goes in first. He is the son that runs the most, so I usually like to buckle him in place so he can't run off before we are ready to go. Doing anything in a suit is difficult, especially lifting a thirty pound son into a car seat and buckling him up correctly, without getting "CSC" on your suit. (Car Seat Crap or CSC is all of the left over food, water, juice, spitup, throwup, candy, boogers, junk that accumulates in the car seat between washes.)

Noah is always second, he is at the point where he listens and follows most directions. He usually climbs into his car seat and waits to be buckled. Usually.

Cohen is always last, he is the least mobile so he doesn't go far when you leave him by himself.

It is at this point almost every Sunday morning that Stephanie comes rolling down stairs with the "Sunday Bag" filled with books, toys, snacks, diapers, wipes, and all of the other goodies. We fill the sippy cups and bottles and load up for church.

10:58 "What is that smell?"

Just as we are ready to pull out of the driveway we discover that one of the boys has dropped the usual 11:00 BOMB. Ian is the BOMB dropper. So we pull Ian out of the car change his diaper and load him up and head to church.

11:10 "Arrival at Church."
Church in itself is an entirely different experience which I will share at some other point.

Introduction to the World

Stephanie (My Wife) and I got married in 2004, had Noah in Sept of 2005, had Ian in May 2007, and Cohen in June of 2008 and we are expecting to have another boy, "D-Will" in August of 2009. Being a dad and having your first child be a son is pretty awesome, being a dad and having four boys in four years is even more awesome.

As of right now, I don't do bows, dresses, makeup or earrings.

I do sports, airplanes, cars, trucks, Handy Manny, wrestling, poop, farts, burps, bugs, spiders, Choo-Choo's, and fohawks.

I, in no way want to say that our situation is better or worse than anyone Else's, because many of you have had much harder situations than us, however, I think we have a unique situation and want to share it with you.

Since we found out that we were having our fourth boy I have been interesting in finding out the stats on our situation. As you know the odds nation wide on having a boy vs. a girl are 51/49 taken from here.

The odds of flipping a coin and getting heads four times in a row is 1 in 16.5. or about 6% of the time.

The odds of having your first four kids and the same sex is at about 12.5% just from a statistics point of view.

Family Size	Same-Gender	Mixed-Gender
2 Children	50%	50%
3 Children	25%	75%
4 Children	12.5%	87.5%
5 Children	6%	94%
6 Children	3%	97%
7 Children	1.6%	98.4%

The actual statistics look like this.

2-Children Families
All Boys	25.8% Actual 25.0% Predicted
Mixed	52.2% Actual 50.0% Predicted
All Girls	22.0% Actual 25.0% Predicted
3-Children Families
All Boys	14.9% Actual 12.5% Predicted
Mixed	73.0% A 75.0% P
All Girls	12.1% Actual 12.5% Predicted
4-Children Families
All Boys	9.1% Actual 6.3% Predicted
Mixed	85.4% A 87.4% P
All Girls	5.5% Actual 6.3% Predicted

Considering that we are a family of six and the worldwide family size average is less than 3, I can honestly say that we are in a category less than 1% of the worlds population, and to think that we did it all in less than four years without multiples is crazy.

I have been changing diapers for nearly four straight years and come August will have another two years on top of that assuming we don't have any more kids (which is still in negotiations). In August of 2011,also assuming that the fourth boy is potty trained, I can say I have been changing diapers for 6 straight years, Almost 1/5 of my life.

Many of you have asked how many diapers we go through in a week. Honesty, I don't know, but starting on Monday I will figure out what we go through in a week and figure out the monthly and yearly number.


My name is Spencer and I am a father of four boys under four.

What do you want to know? What do want to see? In order for me not to make this a Journal entry blog I want to know what you want to know.

And so four in four begins. -S