Thursday, February 22, 2007

A Large Family?

It appears that Curt and I have entered the 'large family' category as far as most of society is concerned. I am not sure how many children puts you in this area, but we have qualified.
Now, most of the time I go places, I have Annie and Zach, my friend Tracey's 2 kids......no, they don't live here, but they might as well. :-P

Last week I took the kids all to Carl's Jr. for dinner before basketball practice. I ordered 6 kids meals and thought the guy behind the counter was going to pass out for the mere thought of it. I explained that only 4 of the kids were actually mine, the other two were not. He replied "only FOUR??? re you one of those Mormons?" "Um...no I replied, I just have 4 kids....I am Baptist"...like I really needed to explain, but I was caught off guard.
I emailed several of my friends who I consider to have large families (6 kids or more) and asked them how they handle it. We obviously have entered the crazy person stage as far as most are concerned and I don't know how I feel about that (more on that in a minute)... Most of the families state that maybe my family gets that attention because all the children are black...maybe a family with 4 white kids would not get noticed as much. Others feel that most believe that anyone with more than the standard 1.5 kids is bizarre...maybe I do belong to the weirdo club then.??!!
Either way, I am not sure how I feel about being branded a weirdo for the number of children I have. I know it is not the typical family size, I know they are all a different color, I know they are all adopted (which comes into play with the "how much did it cost you to adopt all of them?" question (also considered rude by most standards...)but still.....why do people need to act so exasperated when they see me??
I guess maybe I just needed to vent, to try and figure out how to fix peoples perception of family....I will never fix it so I might as well smile and live with it! ;-P

4 comments:

Julie said...

I don't have any friends that are on the culture grid. :o)

How many workers are at NLL? I wanted to bring a small gift. We don't have a lot of money, but I thought I could make some batches of my soap.

Thanks, Julie (Adopting David and Beverly ~ anyday now, I hope. We have been out of IBESR since November)

Britney said...

My friend is an adoptive mother of 3, and she gets that stupid question all the time.."How much did it cost?" So rude! It's not like you went to a pet store and picked out a puppy! I heard my friend make a smart comment to someone when they asked that. She said "All the kids were lined up in the window saying 'pick me! pick me!' so we just went with the runt...they were cheaper" Ha! I thought that was great!!! :)

Casey said...

Dear LeAnne-
Yep, you've entered the "large family" category now...welcome! I never knew four was considered large until we had our fourth. I'm sure you're getting all the comments we get when we go out, and yes, we still get comments even though ours (for now) are all white! :) I've just learned to grin and say, "yep, they're all mine, they're incredible blessings, and I wouldn't have it any other way." They might still look at me like I'm insane, but at least I'm letting my children know - in front of other people - that I think they're pretty special. Just keep smiling-
Love,
Casey Houseworth

Angela said...

haha, it's so funny what people think is a big family. I guess when we are among all these families with a heart to adopt that we feel like the small family. If you remember anything about me- We have 3 biological sons and are adopting 3 (Stephanie, Jude, and Lovenie) from NLL. Someone recently asked me if ALL THREE boys were mine as if that was some giant number. I just had to laugh at the idea. :) Keep on smiling, giving your all to God and your family and worry none about what other people think your life should be. You are such a delight and a help to so many!

Joyfully, Angela