Comedian Jim Gaffigan Takes Sundays Off From Stand-Up Writer, actor and comedian, Jim Gaffigan, and his wife Jeannie Gaffigan with their 5 children. On Sundays, the comedian and actor Jim Gaffigan, 46, takes a day off from stand-up. Instead of performing, he collects new fodder during family outings with his wife, Jeannie Noth Gaffigan, and their five children, Marre, 9; Jack, 7; Katie, 4; Michael, 22 months; and Patrick, 7 months, and time spent at their home, a fifth-floor walk-up on the Bowery. Some of this material can be seen and heard in Mr. Gaffigan's Grammy-nominated, downloadable comedy special, "Mr. Universe," and on his national tour. It also fills the pages of his new book, "Dad Is Fat," which was released last week. HOMECOMING Being a stand-up comedian, often I will be flying back very early on Sunday. I'll fly back into La Guardia or J.F.K. or Newark, and then I will head home and maybe I'll cook breakfast for the kids. I'll make them scrambled eggs and toast and kind of destroy the place. Then we will do, like, a handoff where my wife will wake up at say, 9:30, 10, and then I'll hand off to her and then I'll go back to bed. CHURCH PREP Then we'll valiantly attempt to get our five children to church on time at St. Patrick's Old Cathedral. We try and get them out the door and bring stuff for them to do at church. Church is the last thing that a kid wants to do, sitting quietly and listening to a guy talking about metaphors, so getting them motivated to do that is a pretty big task. STROLL AND SCOOT Then after that we will most likely go to DeSalvio park or Rockefeller Park downtown and meet up with other parents and kids. We have a double stroller and we have scooters for the three bigger kids. So it would look a little like a mobile day care as we head down the West Side Highway toward Rockefeller Park. PLAYTIME There's always a park involved. You've got to get park time for the kids because they're like greyhounds; you've got to run them, right? My kids will want me to play monster. I'll be the monster and chase them and that kind of thing. GROUP MEAL We do dinner earlyish on Sundays because it feels like things have to occur and before you know it, it can be 8 o'clock at night. We'll eat in the park just because of the sheer number of children and people. When we meet up in large groups we go to Veselka. They have big huge tables, so that's a good place to go after christenings or stuff like that. BATHS AND BOOKS We'll make the trek home after that. Then the process of cleaning them up begins. It's kind of like a conveyor belt of getting five through a bath. Then we do a lot of reading to our kids. There's also something about telling stories that is big in my family, particularly at bedtime. And then there's the wave of getting them to sleep. It never ends, really. ONE NIGHT OFF I'll do a show every night except for on Sundays. The great thing about stand-up is that I can eat with my kids and have a lot of time with them, but I have to go to work afterward, so I can't get too comfortable. But on Sunday, I don't have to worry about that. GROWN-UP TIME Collaborating and organizing or any type of work occurs, I would say, 9 o'clock or later. There's ordering FreshDirect and stuff like that. And then after that, we can relax or write comedy. My wife and I, we write everything together. We've been working on this TV show and writing this book. That happens after the kids go to bed. We might have a glass of wine and laugh about some of the stuff that came up during the week. TWITTER FEED For me, relaxing might be spending an hour on Twitter, as weird as that might sound. I'll come up with an idea and we will rewrite it, and it's fun to see the response. A lot of my comedian friends are on there, like Andy Kindler, Michael Ian Black and Rob Delaney, and we're spread throughout the country. IT'S ALL FUNNY I go to bed at like 2, 2 in the morning. So it's probably work, or quasi-work, from 9 to midnight and then tweeting from 12 to 2. There are definitely tweets that have come out of my Sunday ritual. There was a tweet, after we were walking out of church and my kids were misbehaving and I said to my wife, "Well that's enough to make someone an atheist."