Bad Looks for Large Families! :(

posted this status on FB yesterday upon leaving Wal-Mart: "How do you explain society and why we get bad looks in wal mart for having a large family to an 11 yr old?" Which prompted a discussion among my friends as to why people stare and maybe cause they're curious, I don't mind the curious stares and have even answered the curious questions, usually when people are staring out of curiousity and you catch them staring they will smile or look slightly embarassed or say sorry or something of that nature and you know they aren't having mean thoughts and then I smile back or say that's ok, or have the babies say hi but they were very few smiles for my babies yesterday, maybe cause it was monday, remind me never to visit Wal-Mart on a monday again! lol The question of are we a large family also came up in some of my friends comments, we starting getting all the are you done yet, oh you have such a sweet family, why would you need more, don't you know what causes that, just how many more are you going to have etc when I was pregnant with #3!!! yep the norm in the US isn't even 2 babies per family!! So by society's standards we are a large family, even though quite often I still think of us as a little family! How's that for irony. So I decided to tell my whole Wal-Mart story in this comment that I posted: "yesterday was a no electronics day, so everything I was doing was on my phone and I didn't feel like typing a long comment from my phone. :) so here goes, my kiddos were being (by my standards) distracting at times and the afternoon had already been a rough one (eye appt before that and the glasses place giving me the run around and explaining everything to me 2 or 3 times, I mean do I look stupid?) but I needed groceries, so we found ourselves in the middle of the frozen food aisle, we had already been through most of the grocery section as we had started at the milk and on almost every aisle there was someone (never the same someone) with a not very nice, shall we say scowl, for us and some of those times my kiddos were actually behaving! and mind you, while my boys were frustrating me, I have seen far worse behavior by others children, like I said, I have pretty high standards and expectations for my children's behavior, I had also already ran over the foot of the one that kept trying to run around the buggy (he had already been swatted for this after having been sternly spoke to several times). I did get a good laugh on one aisle (might have been what actually got us ALL out of Wal-Mart in ONE piece! lol) I was giving Chris the "eye" for not getting Kayson's stroller out of another lady's way fast enough, she had 2 kiddos of her own with her, and she goes "oh, I understand!" and we both just laughed, it was a good tension breaker! :) so we are in the freezer aisle and Chris and Kirsten were being a tad louder than I wanted and this old lady shoots us a look dripping with disdain and that was the last straw! I looked at my olders and said, "look, everyone is looking at us! they already look bc we are a big family and now they are looking bc you won't behave, and they're NOT smiling! and I'm getting a headache and I just can't handle it today! so just be nice so we can get OUT of here!" The looks on my babies faces when I enlightened them that we are indeed a large family were good! wish I had that on video (not my rant, but their looks! LOL). so anyways, this must have stayed on Kirsten's mind the rest of the store and she must've known better than to ask before we were all checked out bc as we are walking out of the store (thankful that daddy came by on his way home from work to help us load up! He got their right as we started checking out! I was soooooo thankful for a friendly face!) she starts asking about big families and why would people stare and why would anyone else care how many babies we had and how can you control how many babies you have (I skipped that question!) and I said that society thinks you should only have 2 or 3 babies, which prompted the what is society question and I found myself stumped as to how to explain society in 11 yr old understandable terms. that prompted my status, searching for how I can explain what society means and why it seems to dictate so much of what people do and believe. Sorry so long but that was the reason behind my status. :) thanx for reading if you made it all the way to the end. love you, my friends." and so I leave you with this question, "How do you explain society and why we get bad looks in wal mart for having a large family to an 11 yr old?"