This Sunday I stayed home from church with some sick children (Amber 13, Matthew 10 and Carter 8). When Mark and the rest of the children returned home we sat down and ate lunch and discussed the service with our children.
Mark mentioned that during the sermon Colby had asked “Dad, what’s he saying?” a few times. Impressed that Colby had apparently been trying to pay attention, I looked at him and asked, “So what did pastor say today?” Colby replied with confidence, “He said nothing, Mom.”
On a completely different topic, beginning March 11 I will be joining KimC, mom of 10 at Life in a Shoe, Connie, mom of 8 at Smockity Frocks and Deputy Headmistress, mom of 7 at The Common Room to bring you a weekly series of posts about managing a large family. We’ll be talking about all things large family from cleaning and cooking to scheduling and homeschooling. We are even going to be live blogging on March 18 so you can see what a day in a large family really looks like.
We are hoping that this will be interesting and helpful to you and are open to questions and/or topic ideas from our readers. Here’s your chance to ask the experts four moms who are trusting that the Lord will give us the wisdom that we need to raise the children that he has given us. What do you REALLY want to know about life in a large family?
Related posts:
I’m wondering (in my 2nd week of Sonlight) what you do when one child is too sick to participate? Do you hold off school until they can join you, or do you go ahead without them? If you go ahead, do they need to make up the reading, etc.?
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Kimberly @ Raising Olives Reply:
March 1st, 2010 at 4:28 pm
We did this today, several of our children are feeling very poorly. My tendency is to just wait until everyone can take part. That is one of our goals of multi-grading – learning together. This is another advantage of year round schooling. Taking a day off does not put us “behind”.
Actually what we did today was have all of our children come listen to the read aloud parts and we will do anything that didn’t get done today in the future.
Hope your kids feel well soon!
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Nicki Reply:
March 1st, 2010 at 5:55 pm
Thank you! That’s what we ended up doing. After a looooon morning nap, Claudia felt good enough to join us after lunch for the reading time. It all worked out!
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Looking forward to the live blogging!
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Okay, this might sound silly, but how do you get everyone in the car? How do you make sure everyone is safely buckled, etc. And do you take your children with you when you go grocery shopping? If so, do you put the groceries or the kids in the car first?
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Kimberly @ Raising Olives Reply:
March 1st, 2010 at 4:29 pm
This will certainly be a good topic to add to our topic list.
My short answer is yes, we take everyone grocery shopping and I put the little kids into the car first, while the big kids help load groceries.
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Good luck with the series of articles on managing a large household. I am looking forward to reading them and learning a little bit. I have a hard enough time managing my family of six!
Have a wonderful Monday!
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I can’t wait. I would love to hear about how you handle any of the day to day tasks that we all do. Cleaning, bathing, cooking…..
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Having just gotten home from a couple day trip, we’d like some ideas on travelling. We have 4 children and are hoping to adopt #5, plus occassionally have my 33 yr old mentally challenged sister with us. My husband and I were just talking yestersay, wondering how large families travel–about finding more creative ways to pack and make sure everyone has what they need and make them more responsible for it.
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I would love to hear about large family life before you had “bigs” and “middles” to help out. Our first three kids came in 2.5yrs, and #4 will probably arrive as our oldest hits 4yrs old. Our children seem to come along pretty quickly(what a blessing!) so I can easily see us being a family of 8+ before our oldest reaches “middlehood”. I would love to hear advice/encouragement for moms who have to be VERY hands on for their multiple young children. How do I keep up with it all (husband, kids, home, church family) when my hands are the only ones available? (my husband is VERY helpful but he also works long hours -days and then after the kids are in bed -to provide for our family so I don’t want to pass my jobs onto him) Most large family blogging moms already have older children(maybe b/c there was not time to blog before!?) so while I can see how their systems will work in the future they are not especially helpful to me right now.
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Kimberly @ Raising Olives Reply:
March 1st, 2010 at 4:31 pm
This is a great topic and one that I have had on my “topic list” for a while. My life is much different now than when we had 4 children 3 and younger. (No, there was not time to blog.)
This one will be on the list!
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Jenn Reply:
March 1st, 2010 at 5:15 pm
THANK YOU!
And I hadn’t done the math before, it’s encouraging to see that you had FOUR 3yrs and under… most people say like 4 kids all 7 and under or something like that which to me seems so different! A 3 or 4 yr old and a 7 or 8 year old are just two entirely different stages!
Looking forward to this post!
Thanks for being “one who has gone before”
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You know I’m interested in helping littles to worship in church. My 3 yr old is not really old enough to take notes, not even to pretend to take notes, so I’m trying to encourage him to listen and I whispher in his ear now and then to keep him posted on the general topic. This week in the car on the way to church I asked the kids who knew the difference between active participation in worship and just sitting and watching. At first the older kids said they did and in a second my 17 month old said, “I DO!” She certainly knows something about active participation, alright. If only I could get her to do the sit quietly thing! Oh well, it’s a learning process. I’m looking forward to your new series with Kim and Connie.
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I have sooo many questions! CAn’t wait to hear these posts and for the live blogging.
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Even though we only have two for now (for now hopefully being the key phrase) I am really excited about these articles. Way to go, ladies!
Blessings!
Hannah
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