Is it possible to render pages with a {% for lil_foo in foo.children %} in date order, like newest to oldest?
Yup, it’s just:
{%for lil_foo in foo.children.order('date', 'desc') %}
You are my hero @rhukster! 
ok, next level… what if i need to return all the second level child of a page with a for loop in date order… ? 
your going to have to put another loop in side that first loop. have a look at the macro in the partials/navigation.html.twig in the Antimatter theme to see how you can do this recursively.