It's funny. Craig and I have both noticed a change in how people react when you have your fourth kid. With all the others, we got the usual compliments-- Yay, a boy! Yay, a girl! Ooh, so cute! What a chunk!-- nice, congratulatory comments like that. And we didn't really think too much of it, except to enjoy how nice it all was.
But with #4, everyone (especially if they aren't Mormon) wants to slip in something about us being "done." It's not necessarily rude, it's almost more like a fact-- they'll say something like, "You got your perfect birth-- now you can be done!" or "You know it's time to stop when..." Or they'll point out that we can stop, since we have both genders represented. (Actually, my doctors have been saying that ever since we found out that Kendra was a girl. Everyone is very concerned that you not get stuck with all the same gender among your children.)
I guess this means we have officially crossed the line from "normal" family size to "kind of big." My friend Christina assured me that once you have five kids, the comments change again so that they're more along the lines of, "Wow, how many kids are you going to have???" She said at that point you're so out of the realm of normal that it just makes people curious.
That might be kind of a nice change, actually. I can handle being an oddity-- otherwise I never could handle being Mormon! But people trying to tell me what to do makes me just want to go and do the opposite. I find my inner voice wanting to growl, Watch me go and have another kid!
But Craig seems to think that this line of action would be a bad idea at this point in our lives. So I'll desist. For now.
4 comments:
I am always a little perplexed that people feel they can tell others what they should do in regard to kids/family size. I, at least, know to keep my thoughts to myself! :)
That said, it is really strange how that flip switches in your mind. I grew up in a family with three kids (so 5 people total), which really isn't much smaller than your family now. Except that a family of 5 feels normal, while a family of 6 is verging on huge (and once you have 7 you've hit the huge category, so not much wiggle room there)! It's a weird, emotional reaction that I can't quite figure out. Probably rooted in a lot of things, like knowing how exhausting kids are or the fact that I can fit three kids in a small car (though I'm not sure how feasible this is with current car seat regulations), but the fourth requires a leap to a larger vehicle. Anyway, I wonder if I'd grown up in a family of 4 if the line would be in a different place for me. Would 5 people be verging on huge and 6 constitute huge? Or if I'd grown up in a large family of 9 or 10, would my family of 4 seem abysmally tiny?
I noticed that difference also when I had my 4th. Then I looked around and saw many families that 4 kids (not Mormon but yes they were Catholics. HAHA.) I felt like a novelty and embraced it.
My favorite comment after #6 was "WOW that is a handful". My respond was "plus one".
You are doing a great job and you have cute kids!
Ha ha, that was hilarious - you had me laughing out loud at least a couple of times during that post. But I know the real reason you're already thinking about number five - you just want to have three kids before I have another one after Caleb! I knew it was all a competition. ;0)
Seriously, though, it's interesting how people react!
haha, so true about the genders. i get a lot of "you have one of each now! you're all set!" especially here (ca) where any more than two is an anomaly. illustration: a lady in our ward was riding an elevator with her four children and someone asked if it was a birthday party. hehehe.
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