To those of you with large families, how do you do it?! When I had the twins I also had a 3 year old and a 6 year old. All my boys were very good, easy-going children, so that helped a lot. I never had any assistance with the twins - my mom lives 1300 miles away and my MIL was just not able to help. So I just somehow worked it all out. The twins had to be super flexible. If they were napping when it was time to pick up the oldest from school, I just scooped them out of their cribs and put them in their car seats and they just dealt with it. As they got older, they had to continue to be flexible as we went to sports/school events, etc. for the older boys. It does take a certain amount of organization to meet all their needs. The start of a new school year is always THE most hectic time of the year! My DH always has helped out quite a bit also.
How did you decide to have 4 or more kids? Ha! We didn't decide, God did. I had had 3 miscarriages besides my 2 first boys and I had decided I was done. Two months after the last one, before I could get back on birth control, I got pregnant with the twins. We were lucky that we already had a vehicle and house big enough for 2 more children.
Do you wish you had more or less? Not really. Very, very rarely I wish I had a girl. But I was just convinced that if we had anymore it would be another set of twin boys (my mom had 2 sets of twins besides me) - yikes! Now that we are in the most expensive time of our lives with college, drivers, bigger appetites, bigger clothes, I am very thankful we stopped at 4.
What's your favorite part of having a large family? We get a lot of attention for having 4 boys and I love it. The twins are best friends and always have each other as a playmate. With them being the youngest, after they got older, it really made my life easier. For a houseful of boys, we rarely have a problem with fighting.
Your least favorite part? As stated above, the expense, and being very limited on what type of vehicle we could purchase that would fit all of us.
What surprised you the most about having a large family? We weren't surprised. DH and I both come from large families so we assumed we would have one also. What surprised me most was all my miscarriages and that I might have been forced to stop at 2.
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