I was talking to one of my new friends met through adoption blogs last week about the “stair step” siblings that she adopted. The children are currently teenagers, but at the time of their placement in her home, they were newborn, 11 months and 27 months. Three children in diapers at the same time sounds crazy and it makes life a little crazy while you are living it.

While Super Dad and I haven’t had the pleasure of adopting a sibling group like that, we have fostered several. I was reminded of what it was like last night to parent “stair step” children. Our oldest daughter whom we adopted at the age of 15, asked if her children could spend the night at our house so she and her husband could have a night out.

Their youngest daughter is five months, then my Amigrace is 13 months, their oldest daughter is 25 months old and we have a four year old. I lined them up to change their diapers and to feed them. Bedtime was pretty tricky because all four of them only wanted me to rock them to sleep. Super Dad tried his hardest, but they were quite stubborn about the whole thing.

After we had the three older children asleep, they baby began to cry. I finally got her to sleep around one and Amigrace woke up about 30 minutes later. Then around four this morning, our oldest granddaughter woke up crying. By the time I got her settled down, she had woken the baby up again. I managed to get them all back to sleep by six-thirty. Needless to say, I didn’t get much sleep last night.
Unlike an adoptive parent, I sent two of them home with their parents the next evening.

However, if you think it is difficult having them all in diapers, what about when all three siblings go through puberty around the same time? Then they will all begin driving and dating around the same time. You may wish you could go back to those early days.

My friend said that they took all three camping a few weeks after they were placed along with their four birth children, all under eight. Worse yet, she said that they camped in a tent. However, she did point out that they were much younger back then.


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