They Have To Sleep Eventually

Any parent of a toddler knows that small children pick up on just about everything we say and do. My daughter was less than a year when she started to mimic me putting on my make up. She's now about 2 and a 1/2 and can really rock a good smokey eye and applies lipstick like it's nobody's business. ha. The point is, they are watching. And listening. And learning. All the time. They learn language from us. And they learn behaviors from us. Most parents (myself included) don't  realize how much they swear until there's a toddler running around. All it takes is for your toddler to use the f-word in the right context for you to be aware that you may need to be a little more conscious of your language. (Confession: Annabelle has used the F-word countless times in the correct context. Oops.) So we know they model our words. And we know they model our behavior. But what I've realized lately is that they also model our emotions. This may not be news to some of you,

By today's standards a large family is usually considered a family with more than three kids. Anytime someone says they have four or more children, people's eyes bug out of their heads. This is partially due to the fact that the average woman in America gives birth to two children. So that's what we're used to seeing. Most of the people I know I have two children. Some have three. Very few have any more than that. For some reason when you are part of a big family - either the creators of the big family or if you are a child within a large family, it prompts people to ask all kinds of weird questions. People are curious I know, and find it intriguing because it's not something they see very often these days.  Just the six of us I am the oldest of six children and growing up I would get asked all kinds of questions:    Are you guys Catholic? (No.) Don't your parents know what causes that? (Ummm, I think so?) Jeez, they're