It's 5:30 on a Monday morning in November and 12-year-old Lydia Trapp is already up, preparing breakfast.

Still half-asleep, she walks to the kitchen with her arms folded. It's dark and chilly. She puts the pan on the stove and makes a vegetable and sausage omelet for her father, Tom Trapp, who is upstairs getting ready for work. She also puts together his lunch: beef stroganoff left over from the previous night's dinner.

In the 13-member Trapp family, most of the 11 children have daily chores. Monday is Lydia's day to cook.

She sits with her father while he eats, and after he leaves for his job at the Naval Submarine Base, she turns her attention to breakfast for the rest of the family: toast, yogurt and cereal. She slices three loaves of homemade bread. While the bread toasts, she readies almost a dozen servings of yogurt and cereal.

About 7:45 a.m. Lydia finishes preparing breakfast and joins her mother, Karen Trapp, and her 10 brothers and sisters at the family's dining room tables to eat.

”You have to know how to cook because you'll be getting that job here sooner or later,” Lydia says.

The Trapps, who live in Salem, are a local example of a rarity that has gained national attention over the past couple of years. Tom and Karen's 11 children are all under 17 and are all single births, except for the most recent additions to the family: 4-month-old twins Susanna and Stephen. Their family size falls right in the middle of two popular reality shows on the TLC cable TV network: “Jon and Kate Plus 8” and “17 Kids and Counting.”

For Karen and Tom, the size of their family wasn't their decision.

”We leave it up to God,” says Tom, who is 42.

Far above average

While having 11 kids doesn't make the Trapp family the largest, they are well above average. Although the national average number of births per woman has remained steady at around 2, it has fluctuated over the past 40 years.

In 1970, the number of births per American woman averaged 2.4. That fell to 1.7 by 1976, but it's on the rise again. It reached about 2.1 in 2005, according to the National Center for Health Statistics.

”The decision to have kids, part of it is financial: Can you afford to or not?” says Shannon Weaver, an associate professor in the University of Connecticut's human development and family studies department. “You also have to look at religiousness and value systems - whether or not it's appropriate to use birth control or … it's God's gift to have children.”

Religion is the basis for the Trapps' explanation of their large family, and the axis around which their family revolves. Both Tom and Karen became born-again Christians before they married in 1991. Their first child, Mimi, was born about a year after they wed.

”It was not our decision to have a large family,” says Karen, who is 44. “We believe God - he opens and closes wombs and ... decides to give people children or not.”

Tom explains that the family is dedicated to serving God, which is evident in their daily routine and the welcoming nature of the family.

”We've tried to serve God wherever we were,” he says. “As our family grew, even though our family takes time, there's always been an opportunity presented to us.”

Karen and Tom met while attending the University of Wisconsin at Milwaukee. Two years after Tom joined the Navy, they married. His career took his family to Florida, Massachusetts and eventually Hawaii, where they lived for more than five years while Tom was stationed at Pearl Harbor.

In 2004, they moved into their eight-bedroom, four-bathroom home on Round Hill Road. Tom, a commander at the Naval Submarine Base in Groton, is in charge of the maintenance and repair of the 17 home-ported submarines there.

He also runs the Thursday night Bible study group and a ministry outreach program on the base.

Schedules and schooling

The family's daily life revolves around Bible study, home schooling and making the Trapp operation run smoothly.

Each day when the children wake up, they do their devotions, which includes either reading from their Bibles or completing Sunday school homework.

After that, they start on their assigned chores for that day. On Monday, for example, Lydia cooks, Dan, 9, takes out the trash, Mimi, 16, takes care of the laundry, and Maria, 7, vacuums the living room. Most of the children also help their mother with the twins.

After devotions come morning chores and piano practice, and then breakfast. Schoolwork follows. The older children have DVD lectures from Pensacola Christian College that they watch as part of their work.

”It's nice because I get to pick what's next,” says David, 15, referring to the different subjects of his DVD lectures.

The children break for lunch and some outdoor fun, usually a game of kickball or ultimate Frisbee. They spend the rest of the afternoon finishing their lessons and homework and any remaining chores before dinner.

Karen spends most of her day tending to the twins. She also answers schoolwork questions, does laundry and picks up around the house. Recently, as the twins have become less restless, she's been trying to take midday naps when she can.

”It does keep me out of a lot of things I used to do,” Karen says of caring for the babies. She adds that she is looking forward to when she's able to go out to dinner with her husband again. “But I don't have a need to get away from (the kids). I love to be around them.”

Busy Sundays

Sunday, a day of rest for many, is the family's busiest.

Some of the children pile into one of the family's two 15-passenger vans, and head to the submarine base with Tom.

”It's as much a part of our family time as anything,” Tom says. “Being a big family, our family time is more brief. We're mostly limited to day trips.”

At the base, they meet sailors, some of whom are members of Tom's outreach, and then drive to the Cornerstone Baptist Church in Oakdale. Karen and the rest of the family join them at the church for Sunday school and service. Afterwards, the Trapps invite some of the sailors and church members back to their home for a meal and sometimes a game of ultimate Frisbee.

”It's really nice and welcoming,” says Reanaldo Guevarra, 20, a submarine school student who visited with the Trapps on a recent Sunday. “You're missing home and they accept you among their family.”

Dressed in their Sunday best, the children help their mother serve the meal, which is sometimes prepared by other church members. When their guests leave, the children help clean up.

They'll head back to church that night for a shorter, congregation-led service to share how God has worked in their lives that week.

Shouldering responsibility

While the reason for having large families may have shifted over time, some of the ideals remain.

Having kids has gone from being somewhat of an economic asset to an economic liability, says Weaver, of UConn. “Farming families would have more kids for more help. It made sense. Nowadays, kids cost you more than they ever contribute.”

Because of Tom's responsibilities and length of service, his pay is more than $100,000 a year, and the family has been able to avoid needing assistance to make ends meet.

Although Weaver was speaking in terms of finances, she says that children - especially older siblings - in large families still realize their important role.

”There are different demands to having a large family this day and age. Older siblings have to take care of younger ones,” she notes.

As Monday wears on, Mimi, the oldest, helps Lydia prepare dinner: grilled chicken and vegetable wraps.

While the two girls work on the vegetables, David is outside grilling the chicken.

As the other children play board games or tend to the twins in the living room, Lydia and Mimi are finishing rolling up the 17 wraps as Tom walks in the door from work to excited shouts of “Hi, Daddy.”

After dinner, the house starts to settle down. Like Sundays, Mondays are “family football time.” It's one of the television programs the whole family watches together, even if some of the children roll their eyes when they hear the phrase “family football time.” While Tom prefers watching football, most of the children prefer the Food Network.

By about 9 p.m., some of the younger kids start to fall asleep on the couch. Karen, who heads up to bed a little earlier to put the twins down, calls down to the children when it's their time for bed. The nine oldest Trapp children, half asleep, make their way to their bedrooms, and the Trapp household is quiet again.

M.NAUGHTON@THEDAY.COM

Article UID=83cdd8f5-6983-4713-b13c-9c894e4e90d8