Mom to five (!)

I never imagined myself having a large family. I have a brother and a sister. I love coming from a family of three. My sister is all kinds of awesome and my brother rocks. We fought some like most sibs but I have fond happy memories. My husband also comes from a family of three. We never planned a large family of our own.

My first college roommate/sorority sister came from a large family. Christa was the second oldest of 6 children. I found her family incredibly fascinating. Not only were they a large family but they were so close. They bought each other birthday gifts with their own hard earned money without the prompting of their parents. They wrote letters to each others informing them of the going on's in their lives. I was in awe. I am still am in awe to this very day. My kids freak out if they think one of their siblings had less chores than them, let alone buy each other gifts.

But here I am. Mom to five. I still can't quite believe it. And here is the thing. When you have lots of kids, people think you are some sort of expert. That you must have lots of patience and energy and that you are supermom. People...I have no freaking clue what I am doing! I am no supermom. My kids eat McDoubles from McDonald's at least once a week (ok, twice). I have been a mom for 13 years now and I am still trying to figure things out. Every time I feel on top of my game...they throw me for a loop.

I guess my point is that parenting is hard whether you have 1 or 10 kids. You try different things and some things work and some things do not. But you do your best. There is no perfect way to parent. There may a perfect way to parent your family but parenting is not one size fits all. Parenting is just one big learning experience.

By the way, they may eat McDoubles once or twice a week but I promise, I cook (from scratch) the rest of their meals. And they eat their veggies, for real! I promise. Hopefully that offsets all the junk.

*T-shirt image from Cafe Mom. They have lots of cute t-shirts!