I worry for Joji. He hasn’t gotten the attention that Leo has gotten from us. He gets attention from Leo, which means that he learns fighting, stubbornness, and arguments – all of the major topics that older brothers are quite willing to pass down to younger brothers.

Our time is now split between the boys, and we have two sets of challenges that we need to bounce between. Leo’s 6 now and is at an age where he has occasional meltdowns when stress gets too much (losing at a sporting event, being forced to do something when he’s exhausted). Joji flat-out doesn’t eat food on his own which requires a lot of effort from us to coerce him into eating on his own, and he’s massively stubborn when it comes to asking him to do daily routine tasks.

When it comes to Joji, he needs more human conversation and interaction instead of the tablet with the YouTube trash he gets. He spends a lot of time on the tablet when we need to prepare dinner or clean up, and the amount of garbage on YouTube is shocking: programs where a car runs over toys, plenty of cartoons where the characters don’t even talk but instead coo or make infuriating noises that the boys copy. With Leo, we can explain why we want him to do things, but Joji flat-out doesn’t get it when we say “Don’t watch that, go get a book”.

Joji’s still in diapers but at the tail end of it and wearing them just in case. He has only had one accident in the past few weeks so it’s about time for him to stop wearing them. Leo was out of diapers around 3 years 1 month after some early attempts to move away from diapers, and Joji is now at 3 years 3 months.