Ryan Reynolds says he and wife Blake Lively get a little "crazy" when it comes to thinking and talking about their four children.
The "Deadpool & Wolverine" star told TODAY's Willie Geist in a preview clip of the Sept. 15 edition of Sunday Sitdown that the couple's attentive parenting style differs from the way his mom and dad raised him.
"It’s just so different," said Reynolds. "There are so many tools available to us. There’s so many, like, resources available."
To hear Reynolds tell it, the couple can't spend a night out together without talking about how they're raising their daughters, James, 9, Inez, 7, and Betty, 4, and son Olin, 1.
"You know, my kids never believe it, but, when Blake and I will go out for dinner or something like that, the entire time is spent talking about, 'How can we be better parents?'" he said with a laugh. "'How can we address their needs?'"
A night out of the house for his own parents, said Reynolds, likely unfolded in a very different way.
"I can’t even imagine my parents having those conversations without, yeah, just going, 'Oh, God. This feels like chemotherapy,'" Reynolds joked. "'The cancer’s gone. Let’s enjoy dinner and let’s just live in here forever.'"
Willie agreed, saying date nights with his wife, Christina, typically revolve around their children.
"It’s so true. We go to these restaurants and sit at that table and just talk about our kids for two hours," Willie said.
"Yes, and look at pictures and videos of our kids," Reynolds joked.
Lively and Reynolds have never shied away from gushing — and joking — about parenthood.
In July, Reynolds told Amanda Hirsch, host of the “Not Skinny But Not Fat” podcast, that the couple was embracing “the chaos” of parenthood, whether it’s co-sleeping with all their kids or trying (not very well) to keep their home tidy.
The former “Gossip Girl” star and the “Deadpool” actor value their children’s privacy so much that few photos of the kids have ever been made public (outside of Reynolds’ 2016 Hollywood Walk of Fame ceremony).
Their pal Taylor Swift might have let slip a detail about the kids on July 25 when she referred to Reynolds as her “godkids’ sperm donor” in a funny message about his film “Deadpool & Wolverine.”
Still, Lively and Reynolds have said just enough over the years to piece together a mini family biography. Learn more about Lively and Reynolds’ children: James, Inez, Betty and Olin.
James
The “Green Lantern” co-stars wed in 2012, and just months after their second anniversary, started a family with the arrival of daughter James, whose name was confirmed right here on TODAY.
“You did say a few months ago, before she was born, that you were going to name her Excalibur Anaconda Reynolds,” Willie Geist mentioned during a March 2015 interview with Reynolds. “So can we call her Anna at least — short for Anaconda?”
“That is not the child’s name!” Reynolds shot back. “It’s Butternut Summersquash.”
Eventually, he gave the dad jokes a rest and admitted, “It’s James.”
One didn’t have to look far up the family tree to see where inspiration for her name came from.
She was named in honor of her father’s father.
“It felt right,” Reynolds told Mr. Porter in 2018 of the gesture. He added, “My father died soon after my daughter was born, but he got to see her, which makes me happy.”
Though she’s not exactly famous like her folks, James can officially call herself an entertainer, too, thanks to an early recording gig.
At just 2 years old, James’ voice was featured on a song called “Gorgeous,” from Swift.
Inez
Nearly two years after James was born, she got a little sister. In September 2016, Inez joined the family, and Reynolds didn’t wait long to reveal to his fans and followers that he and Lively had another girl at home.
“The mobile above my daughter’s crib is just a whole bunch of NuvaRings,” he tweeted the following month, referring to the birth control method. “So she remembers how lucky she is.”
As for her name, Inez was first widely rumored to be spelled “Ines.”
“I had a new baby, Inez, with a ‘z,’ even though everyone says it’s with an ‘s,’” Lively told People in 2018. “I don’t know why, please tell Wikipedia.”
When she was a toddler, Inez spent some time on the set of “Deadpool 2.” According to Reynolds, the visits didn’t go well.
“I’d leave the house in the morning, and I’d be Dad,” he recalled during a chat on Entertainment Weekly Radio. “Then by lunch, it looked like I’d fell asleep on a stove. My 1-year-old daughter would just sob, I mean, for hours after seeing me. It’s torture because you can’t rip it off in the moment and be like, ‘No, no, no! See I’m under here,’ and undo four hours of prosthetic makeup work.”
Betty
In October 2019, Lively and Reynolds expanded their family with the arrival of yet another daughter, and though it took a while before they went public with her name — a family tradition by that point — they were quick to share a photo of the little one.
Sort of.
In a social media post highlighting an election in Canada set for October that same year, Reynolds included a photo of him and his wife standing in the woods, smiling as they cuddled an infant between them. The baby’s face, however, wasn’t visible. Instead, it was edited out and substituted with a smiley drawing.
That blurry bundle of joy turned out to be named Betty, a fact first teased by unofficial Auntie Taylor Swift. “Betty” was also the name of a track on Swift’s 2020 album, “Folklore.” Fans figured out the connection after noticing the only other names mentioned in the song were James and Inez.
Betty’s parents were all too happy with the honor.
“I mean, the names are the names of our kids, but we trust her implicitly, and she’s very sensitive to any of that stuff,” Reynolds said of Swift during a SiriusXM Town Hall. “And obviously, the song has nothing to do with our kids other than our kids’ names.”
Olin
Lively revealed her fourth pregnancy in September 2022, both by debuting her baby bump in a red-carpet appearance at the 10th annual Forbes Power Women’s Summit and in a set of photos she shared to Instagram days later.
“Here are photos of me pregnant in real life so the 11 guys waiting outside my home for a 🦄 sighting will leave me alone,” an excerpt from the post’s caption read. “You freak me and my kids out.”
Maybe it was all that unwanted attention that led Lively and Reynolds to keep details about their fourth baby to themselves. The child was born in February 2023.
During a May 13 appearance on TODAY, Savannah Guthrie asked if the name of Reynolds’ youngest child appears on Swift’s latest album, “The Tortured Poets Department.”
The actor dodged the question with a witty response, saying, “We always wait for Taylor to tell us what the child’s name will be. “We’ll say this. We’re still waiting, so Taylor, let’s maybe start.”
During that same interview, Reynolds also touched on parenting his four children while Lively was away.
“You know, single dad. I’m a Reba McEntire song. Single dad, doing it all. Yeah, just doing it for them, right?” he said, before jokingly adding, “(I) took them all to the park. Told them Mommy left when they were young. Surprisingly, you get a lot of action that way.”
Reynolds had Hoda Kotb and Savannah laughing, adding, “No, we had a good time. No one died, which was nice.”
On July 22, at the premiere of Reynolds' movie “Deadpool & Wolverine,” Reynolds appeared to reveal the name of his and Lively's fourth child.
“I want to thank my kids, James, Inez, Betty, Olin, who are here,” he said. “I hope that, if I’m lucky, this moment will be the most traumatic thing — that is, the contents of this movie — that happens in your wondrous life.”
On July 26, Reynolds revealed in a promotional video that his fourth child is a boy. In the clip, he spoke with a man named John Bell whose son Jake, a fan of Deadpool, died.
After listening to the man's story, Reynolds said, “I want to share with you that I, too, have a son. Boy, John, if I love him one-tenth as much as you love Jake, I feel like I’ve done a pretty damn good job.”
Then in August, Lively opened up celebrating Olin's first birthday earlier this year.
“My birthday cakes always have a little bit of a sense of humor,” Lively told BBC Radio 2. “For my baby, I just did a giant set of t---, which I feel like will haunt him for life. But what do they want at 1? He can’t declare what he wants. So, boobs.”
Lively joked, “I’ll show you a picture after, they’re pretty amazing — of the cake, not of my ... also amazing though.”