Jeannie and Jim Gaffigan navigated parenting their five children differently when lockdown was put in place.
The comedian, 54, and his wife share five kids together — Marre, Jack, Katie, Michael and Patrick — and the parents tell Reveal with Drew and Jonathan Scott that they've always been accustomed to handling a big family — at least until the pandemic lockdown set in and they saw their routine disrupted.
"Because Jim and I both come from large families (he's one of six and I'm one of nine), five kids never seemed like a big deal," Jeannie says. "We always figured out a system to make it work. Then, during quarantine, all the things we had in place to maintain structure vanished instantly: no more sitters, school, camps, helpers, outings, etc."
"Suddenly we were like, 'Oh, my God! We have five kids!' " she adds.
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Jeannie acknowledges, too, that their situation during the ongoing pandemic has been a fortunate one.
"We're safe, we have a roof over our heads, we have food to eat," she says. "There are a lot of people in worse situations. And I would never see my teenagers otherwise, so we're actually experiencing them a lot more, even though I was going nuts — I mean, they eat all the time, the laundry was insane. But we all got closer and became more of a cohesive team than ever before."
"Sure, there was a lot of screaming and crying — and sometimes the kids got upset too," she jokes, "but we had incredible moments with each one of them that we would have never had if they were off at school or if Jim was traveling. That was the bright patch in all of this chaos."
Jim applauds his wife's parenting skills, telling the outlet she is "much better at parenting than I am."
"She's tireless and very good at making things special for the kids, like decorating their rooms and giving them actual attention," he says.
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