LITTLE ROCK(AP)
It's a happy Mother's Day for an Arkansas woman _
she's pregnant with her 18th child.
Michelle Duggar, 41, is due on New Year's Day, and the
latest addition will join seven sisters and 10 brothers. There are
two sets of twins.
"We've had three in January, three in December. Those
two months are a busy time for us," she said, laughing.
The Duggars' oldest child, Josh, is 20, and the youngest,
Jennifer, is nine months old.
The fast-growing family lives in Tontitown in northwest Arkansas
in a 7,000-square-foot home. All the children _ whose names start
with the letter J _ are home-schooled.
Duggar has been been pregnant for more than 11 years of her
life, and the family is in the process of filming another series
for Discovery Health.
The new show looks at life inside the Duggar home, where chores
_ or "jurisdictions" _ are assigned to each child. One
episode of the new show involves a "jurisdiction swap,"
where the boys do chores traditionally assigned to the girls, and
vice versa, Duggar said.
"The girls swapped jurisdictions, changing tires, working
in the garages, mowing the grass," she said. "The boys
got to cook supper from start to finish, clean the bathrooms,"
among other chores.
Duggar said she's six weeks along and the pregnancy is going
well. She and her husband, Jim Bob Duggar, said they'll keep
having children as long as God wills it.
"The success in a family is first off, a love for God, and
secondly, treating each other like you want to be treated,"
Jim Bob Duggar said. "Our goal is for each one of our children
to be best friends, and everybody working together to serve each
other makes that happen."
The other Duggar children, in between Joshua and Jennifer, are
Jana, 18; John-David, 18; Jill, 16; Jessa, 15; Jinger, 14; Joseph,
13; Josiah, 11; Joy-Anna, 10; Jeremiah, 9; Jedidiah, 9; Jason, 7;
James, 6; Justin, 5; Jackson, 3; and Johannah, 2.
___
On the Net:
Duggar family Web site:
http://www.duggarfamily.com
Discovery Health site:
http://health.discovery.com/convergence/duggars/duggarfamily.html
Copyright 2008 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.