Five Days of Silence

It’s been quiet over here at Gindi’s.  I haven’t written for five days.  I started this little blog without telling anyone in October of 2010 as a virtual baby book since I’d been pretty bad the first year of the triplets life with documenting milestones.  (I’d been somewhat busy!)  I didn’t have much of a schedule, but then I started telling people about the blog and it grew, and I roughed out a basic schedule – writing every day but Wednesday and posting photos that day.  As a Type A organized duty-girl, I stuck to that.  But I let myself off the hook this long Fourth of July weekend.

Instead, I just experienced.  I experienced what went on without taking one note or sending myself an email.  I laid in bed with little bit as she held my face and told me, once again, I was her best friend.  I laid there as she asked me every night and every morning if, “No Maria is coming?”  (Our wonderful nanny.)  And then watched her face split open with joy when the answer was once again that mommy was going to stay all day and all night.  I realized as hard as the time is with them sometimes, we all really do love it and there’s never enough of it.  Time.  Just to be with each other.  I kissed all over my little man’s feet and told them how perfect they were and begged him never to get any older than five so I wouldn’t have to send him to kindergarten (he agreed, let’s see how that works out).  I cuddled with the eldest and planted a million kisses all over his gorgeous cheeks.  I told him how wonderful he was and how I love him all the way to the moon and back.  Already feeling them growing up so fast and knowing I’m powerless to stop it.

We swam for hours.  They have had a radical transformation these past few weeks and they can swim across our pool now and dive down deep to try to touch the bottom of the pool in the shallow end.  I got the time wrong for the Fourth of July parade and so we missed it and they forgave me.  We posed for post parade pictures so no one will remember 10 years from now we weren’t actually in it and then had post-parade watermelon slices and brownies.

I spent hours with my mom cleaning out her parents storage unit that she’s kept for far too long.  She retires next year and it has to go.  We made so much progress and I found so many memories.  Happy and sad.  A box of my old letters.  A timeline I’d created from my year I saw a therapist in my mid-20s.  My Mimi’s last pajamas and room things before we finally lost her to the evil Alzheimer’s.  I brought my children home a stuffed dog of hers at the end that she’d loved.  They love it now too and when I see them with that little stuffed Dalmatian I think of her.

We went to a cook out at dear friends of ours and Bray got to talk hunting with the boys and I got to talk fashion with the girls as the kids played happily in the play room until we all decided to jump in the pool and cool off.  The kids begged to go back the next day.

I loved and laughed and sweated and fell off to sleep and hugged and fell and cannonball-ed and cuddled and danced and lived for five full days.  Each moment a treasure for those years that are bound to come despite me trying to stop them at five…