Grateful

I've always had a slight addiction to reality TV. I especially enjoy the parenting variety of these types of shows. It started with A Baby Story, Supernanny, Wifeswap, and the like. Then my obsession morphed into the shows featuring extraordinary circumstances. You know what I'm talking about: Jon and Kate, The Duggars, Quints by Surrogacy, etc.

This past week I watched the Octomom special. When I saw her trying to juggle (and I mean literally juggle) her 8 babies all at once, I felt overwhelmed. Granted she has some help, but seriously... life with 14 kids? 8 of them being infants? You've got to be kidding me. I'm tired just thinking about it.

Today I watched a new show, "Raising Sextuplets." Since the situation of this family intrigued me, I set it up to record all episodes on DVR a few weeks ago. Somehow, I stumbled across a spare moment to watch some of it today. These people have six 18-month olds. What I witnessed was a lot of diaper changing (even more than I'm doing!), a lot of boo-boos, a lot of crying, and a lot of the "no biting, no hitting, no pushing" commands that I so frequently use with Joey. As I watched these parents struggle to take care of six babies, I began to wonder if that would be something I could do. I've always thought of myself as being capable of anything. But in this case I'm not so sure. (quite honestly, I'm glad I don't have to find out...) I thought to myself, they have 3 times as many babies as I do. Katelyn and Olivia would just be 1/3 of a group of Sextuplets. How would I possibly take care of 4 more infants at one time? And how much louder would my house be? YIKES.

When I turned off the TV to tend to my own houseful of children I looked at the three of them and actually felt relieved. I feel grateful that God decided to bless me with my wonderful children just one or two at a time. Not 6. You know the old saying, God doesn't give us more than we can handle? Well, I'm pretty sure He knows what He is doing, because this is about all I can handle right now.