As Parents, Let's Choose the Things that Matter for Our Kids

We can get caught up in "doing" a lot of things for our kids. In our culture we're all about "things."

More things.

Better things.

Lots of things.

We're consumers and takers. We want status and prestige and the best things. We have resulting high expectations for achievement.

We want getting ahead. Pushing. Demanding. Meeting the world's standards.

Let's breathe as parents. I'm reminded as I find myself in that place again. Comparing. Compromising. And I ask myself, `What matters for my kids?'

Love.

Faithfulness.

Commitment.

Compassion.

Selflessness.

Hope.

Perseverance.

To serve and not be served.

To go and make disciples.

To love the Lord with all their heart, soul, strength and mind.

What matters are the things that last.

The things that build family.

The things that transcend culture.

What matters is the love and faith and hope and trust and joy and peace that keep us together when the world around us crumbles.

You don't find it's what the world offers.

You find it reflecting and radiating from the Son sent to live and die and live again for each one of us. All of us.

Things Kids Say: Judah's Words Of Wisdom

The coveted green light saber

Judah is our resident 4-year-old who is as extroverted as a Sabo kid comes. He loves people, loves to interact and loves to talk. And he says the funniest things sometimes.

The other morning I was here on the couch starting the morning off right -- reading my Bible and enjoying some coffee. The house is quiet, the kids are still sleeping and I'm in the word with a cup o' joe. Doesn't get much better in the morning.

For some reason Judah had migrated to the couch across from me during the night and was in a heavy state of slumber. As I'm reading I notice him stirring. Then he opens his eyes, starts to sit up and looks right at me. He blinks a couple of times and then says, "The green light saber is longer than the blue one."

Was he dreaming about the green light saber? Was it some sort of prophetic vision involving a light saber duel? I can't be sure. All I know is that the green light saber is longer than the blue one. What else would I need to know?

The other day Seth sat at the table enjoying a yogurt. It was one of those generic little store brand containers of yogurt he was plowing through. It looked pretty tasty to Judah as he sauntered in from the other room where he took a brief pause from watching TV so he asked MerriGrace for one. She dutifully brought him one and while she was still within earshot he opened it and came to a rather devastating revelation: "Holy smokes," he said somewhat under his breath. "I'm going to spill this all over the place."

But he quickly recovered and came to his senses with a request. "MerriGrace," he said, looking over her way in the kitchen. "Can I take this into the family room. I promise I won't spill it."

Needless to say, he ate the yogurt with Seth at the table. I will point out that Judah polished off about half of the container of his yogurt. Seth devoured off two of them.

Another time we were driving home from Taylor's wedding and Judah was in one of the back seats next to Ethan. He and Ethan had a very lively conversation on the way home and we all got lots of laughs. We were in West Virginia somewhere and talking about stopping for a snack at a convenience store. We talked about picking up cans of black beans and corn to snack on. "Who eats black beans and corn?" Ethan said.

Judah had a quick answer: "Seagulls do!"

We have no idea where that came from but you just never know what will go through his mind. And usually what goes through his mind comes out of his mouth. As we proceeded through West Virginia the kids were trying to agree on a movie to watch on the portable DVD players in the van. Ethan suggested "The Santa Clause" starring Tim Allen. But Judah objected. Rather vociferously.

"Oh man!" he said. "That's the worstest movie ever!"

I have a sneaking suspicion Judah was holding out to watch one of the Star Wars movies. After all, he's apparently a kid who dreams about light sabers.

2015 In Review: The Top 5 Posts

Happy New Year from the Sabo family!

We learned quite a few things in 2015 in the Sabo house. For starters, we learned it is possible to go three years without welcoming a new Sabo ... baby. We did the whole `plus one' thing this year when Taylor married the former Bethany Hayes on Dec. 19 in Berea, Ky. I have to be honest with you, adding a new daughter without it involving sleepless nights, a trip to the hospital and diapers galore is a pretty sweet way to get to 15 kids. I should have thought of this a lot earlier ...

We also learned a little bit about what our 14 Kids and Blessed readers like. I discovered it's hard to compete with a woman who had babies -- and boy howdy did she have babies! -- for 40 years. That is not a typo. More on this amazing woman later.

Without further ado, here's a recap of the five most popular 14 Kids and Blessed blog posts.

5) Need some wisdom about how to handle bickering kids. Look no further. We sat down with a foremost world expert on how to deal with the young 'uns who don't make nice with each other. That's right, we got a few minutes with Julie Sabo to answer our probing questions. Read and learn: Solving bickering kids

4) With 16 people -- now 17 with the addition of Bethany -- there's lots of birthdays, lots of graduations, just plain lots of lots of. So that means one thing in the Sabo house -- c-e-l-e-b-r-a-t-e! Here's the link: What Sabos do best

3) Our family has entered a new season. We're not having babies but kids are getting married. We had our first wedding this year and, well, it looks like we're just getting warmed up. There's 13 Sabos on deck! (Disclaimer: Not all Sabos are of marrying age ...). I break down in this post the beautiful thing that happens with a wedding: A Wedding Gift

2) The second-most popular blog post reveals that a picture says a thousand words. Or a picture can contain 17 Sabos. Whatever the case, we are deeply indebted to Sara Harris Photography for squeezing in -- so to speak -- a Sabo family photo shoot in a very small window of time in which we were all together. Here's the post: Family photo time

1) Read this slowly and let it sink in, marinate, or whatever it takes for you comprehend these colossal facts. Lyudmila Vassilyev, an 18th century Russian peasant woman of incredible fertility, gave birth to 69 children. You read that right. When you get up off the floor and want the details, go here: Non-stop babies

We hope you all have enjoyed this blog and thanks again for stopping by. Happy New Year!

The Day Seth Turns 3 Years Old

Seth rocks the shades he made at church.

Another day, another Sabo birthday. I have this standard joke that the first thing I do when I wake up in the morning is ask myself if one of my kids has a birthday today. Yesterday it was Gabe's. Today it is Seth's birthday. I just heard Julie say that she can't believe she had him three years ago. Neither

He is a one of a kind Sabo kid. He's built completely differently than all of our other Sabo wee lads and lasses. He's just solid. That's the best way to put it. While our kids traditionally have been on the petite side at a young age, Judah broke the mold. He weighs more than Judah -- who is 1 1/2 years older -- and might weigh more than Olivia, who is almost 5 years older. That just means there's more to snuggle with.

He's affectionately called "Seffers" by most everyone in the house. It's a nickname we believe was coined by Evie and it's stuck. In fact, when he tell him he is "Seth" he disagrees. "I'm Seffers," he says.

He's a gentle guy with a kind heart and he's best friends with Judah. The other day they were having lunch together at the table and had the following conversation:

Judah: "Hey Seth, you want to play a pretend game where you're my brother and we're eating lunch together?"
Seth: "Okay Judah."

It's pretty cool when pretend and reality collide. Nothing but good times.

He likes Star Wars and Frozen and going to the beach, seeing his friends at church and snuggling with Mama, not in that order. He's very partial to Mama. And let's just say Mama loves snuggling with Seth. We all do. For however much longer it lasts.

A Year In Instagram Photos In Gloucester, Virginia: Rivahstyle

We live in a little 3-bedroom house with 2 bathrooms that's 1,600 square feet. Well, almost 1,600 square feet. Basically there's kids everywhere. We rack 'em and stack 'em.

But one of the things I love about our little house is that we're three blocks from a white sandy beach on the York River. The sunsets are amazing. The kids have a blast down there. I love to walk down there and enjoy the peace of the tidal saltwater. I thought I'd share some of my Instagram highlights from the past year of living on a peninsula, a few blocks from the beach. If you'd like to find me on Instagram, I'm @jmatthewsabo and I'll follow back!

Do you have a favorite?

Of Words and Soccer Balls

We had traveled somewhere around five hours across the searing semi-arid desert of northeastern Nigeria, timing our journey to beat the crowds pouring out of mosques on Friday afternoon prayers. That's because, in all honesty, as an American it's better to keep a low-profile on Friday afternoons in the vast swath of Muslim-dominated northeastern Nigeria where Boko Haram is known to operate. Through villages we dodged kids and livestock, stopping for lunch at a roadside food stand where we picked up two women and a child who squeezed into the back seat of our SUV for a lift to town.

At our "picnic table" beneath a fraying tarp, slender young boys hovered around us, smiling and hungrily eyeing our lunches of boiled fish and rice. I left some of the rice and fish on my plate and as I headed to our SUV watched the little boys pick up our plates, only to have them commandeered by older boys who had swooped in. My last sight of our roadside eatery was a group of teens wolfing down the scraps as the little boys watched. 

To continue, go here: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/words-soccer-balls-matt-sabo?trk=hp-feed-article-title-publish

The World Record For One Woman Having Babies

Matt & Julie -- Relative minor-leaguers in the `kid' department

There's something I need to clear up. Some accusations, aspersions, and rumors that have come our way over the last several ways. It's been on my mind recently and I just want to clear the air. All those people who say we have a lot of kids? You're wrong. It's just not true. We're not even in the minor leagues when it comes to kids.

How can I say this? Pretty easily. And I'm not even comparing ourselves to the Duggars and however many kids they have at the moment. You see, I've done some research. I've asked the right questions. I've probed, nerded out, googled, whatever you want to say. And I'm here to tell you that the truth of the matter is that we might only have a starter set of kids when you compare us to the legend of baby-making. The woman with the womb in the Birthing Hall of Fame. The one whose maternity dresses we are not worthy to wear. (Especially me.)

Just out of curiosity, what do you think is the world record for one woman giving birth? Is it 24? Would you say 30? Can you imagine, gasp, 40? Let me just say, you're getting warm.

Friends, strangers and even Sabo blog stalkers, there is one woman who stands alone in recorded Western history for the fruitfulness of her womb. She put the `pro' in prolific. Let's just say she's pro-life like no one else.

Between the years of 1725-65 (Which, if my calculations are correct, is 40 years ... that's 40 years of giving birth ladies.) Ludmila, a Russian peasant woman and wife of Feodor Vassilyev,  gave birth to 69 children by 27 births. That is not a typo. That's 69 babies. Sixty-nine. Say it out loud for effect.

Yes, it's true. According to the Guinness Book of World Records, all the women put together reading this blog probably don't have enough kids between them to compare to Ms. Vassilyev. So how did she do it? Uh, let's rephrase that. How did she have so many kids? The key is multiple births. All you young mothers out there start taking notes.

She had four sets of quadruplets, seven sets of triplets and sixteen sets of twins. So there you go. It's all about multiple births. Got it? Not to mention the fact that she had babies over the course of 40 years. Does that mean she started cranking out wee lads and lasses at 14 years of age and finished at 54 years old? I'm not sure. Whatever the case, apparently she seemed to enjoy the whole child-birthing thing. God bless the woman, eh? Here's another thing: All but two of the children survived infancy. In 18th century rural Russia no less.

Take a minute to let this all sink in. Sixty-nine babies. No hospitals. No running water. No disposable diapers. No long, hot showers. No epidurals. No birthing rooms...no wipes, baby food in jars, formula, or anything else like it.

What a woman.

So I hope this encourages you all to rethink the whole child-rearing thing. Maybe recalibrate what constitutes having kids. And having lots of kids. While you're thinking about that, I'm going to go ask Julie when she's ready to start having kids.