motherhood Archives - Gindi Vincent

I knew this would be a hard week. Good hard, but busy hard. I’m teaching my kids in our church VBS in the morning and working in the afternoon (AND early morning – 7 am conference calls), as well as squeezing in a speech in Dallas, but I figured it was only for a week.

But when the first day kicks off with returning home at 12:55 to conference calls at 1, 1:30, 2, 2:30, 3, and 4, and you have to step away from one said call because your daughter gets busted in the nose by her brother and blood spurts everywhere and your husband passes out, well, you just want to throw in the towel even though it’s just Monday.

So instead, I wanted to jot down the sweetest memories from this past week to refocus on all the great things about motherhood as a reminder when it gets super hard down here in the trenches.

After little bit fell asleep one night last week, I sat on her bed in the dim light to kiss her good night. We’d washed her hair and made these little braids all over her head because she likes to wake up with “horsey-hair” (that bushy hair that appears when damp braids are undone). I leaned over to kiss her and could smell the shampoo and see little pieces of her head peeking out from in between the braids. Her eyelashes splayed on her face as she dreamed with her arms wrapped around her precious “pinky” blanket that has been with us since birth. I felt the enormity of this gift of being a girl mommy. I adore her and all her dreams and creativity.

Yesterday morning at church, the baby stood up in the pew and wrapped his arm around my waist as I was singing the praise choruses. He normally stays seated with the other two doing art projects or kids activity games, but he stood up. The song Jesus We Love You came on and he started singing it at the top of his voice right along with me and I could barely keep my composure hearing his sweet voice in my ear singing praise to his Heavenly Father. Then his brother got in on the action and stood up holding on to me on the other side, and I stood there singing and thinking how thankful I am to live in a place where I can worship freely with my children.

The eldest is obsessed with Battleship. I can’t blame him. I was a little obsessed with it growing up too. I’m competitive and love strategy. Yep, he gets that from me. So last night, when we had to cancel our pool party because of the monsoon that hit, we sat at the kitchen table playing. He on his own and me with the little lady on my lap. We played for over an hour. Each of us had hit each other’s five boat, four boat, and two three boats. We were hunting for the “teeny tiny tug boat.” I had called every combination of two on the board. We had to create little white “miss” pegs out of ripped napkin pieces. I had never had this happen in all my Battleship days. Finally I said, there are NO MORE two combinations. He replied emphatically, yes there are, like I6. I retorted I had called I6. He disputed. I showed him my little napkin flag on I6. I looked at his board. There was his tug sitting on I6 which he’d reported was a MISS. We had a grand debate. Little bit and I declared we were the undisputed winners which he contests still today.

Oh some of these days of mothering are hard. But I don’t lose sight of the beauty in the small moments that are unfolding before my eyes all the time. Even now, I’m writing these last sentences with a little bit perched on my knee ready to read our summer time journal stories. So I’ll sign off and encourage you to see the beauty in the in between the hard.

I’ll admit it. I can be a bit of a helicopter mom.

I talk to my girlfriends with several children and they seem surprised by my anxiety.

But they are only mellow because they’ve been through any given stage before.

Everyone knows you’re more relaxed with your second, third, or fourth child.

So they expect me to be less uptight.

Not so. In addition to my natural inclination for uptightness, I have three kids a total of TWO MINUTES apart. Each one is my first child!

Every single stage is brand new to me. All of the challenges that come with any given age, come to me times three. I’ll have moms say to me, oh well my kid skipped that particular issue or stage, but with three of them in the same stage, YOU DON’T SKIP ANY issue or stage.

Right, moms of multiples? Because if one kid doesn’t go through it, another one inevitably does. And if one kid doesn’t pick up that bad habit or attitude, the one who did pick it up will teaches it to the others.

This is why they were in toddler beds well before I wanted them to be. The crazy eldest climbed out of his crib before age two, and then the little lady watched him and she followed suit, and then the baby on the other side watched her and figured it out!

This first-time-mom-anxiety became readily apparent to me this weekend at swim team practice. I ended up chatting with a really cool mom who has three kids of her own as well as her husband’s three kids. Between the six kids, they range in ages from 4 to 13. I expressed my concern over how the new coach was really driving the 5-6 year old swim team. My kids had come home stressed out by the coach’s warning they could not touch the bottom of the pool or the rope during the race. As I’ve written, 25 meters is a long haul for my little swimmers, and I’m not particularly interested in them getting ulcers as a result of swim team.

This momma of six said this in response, I’m kind of glad the coach is unforgiving. My kids need that as a goal. Then they’ll get to the swim meet and see all the other 5-6-ers touching the bottom and the rope and they’ll know it’s okay. But at least they’ll be driven to try to get to the other side. I think if we cater to our kids too much, they don’t adapt to change and aren’t very flexible which makes life harder.

Whoa!

I felt like I should have paid her an hourly rate for her advice.

We kids of the ’70s didn’t have parents helicopter-ing us and we survived. We rode bikes without helmets and our teachers spanked us and our friends hurt our feelings and we wore ridiculous clothes and hairstyles, and we survived.

I know as a first child, my mother was more attentive and nervous to me. In fact, she was likely more attentive and nervous that most ’70s parents. But relatively, we had a low key childhood of swimming all day in the summer and reading books through the winter.

However, something happened that made our generation of mothers, especially we first time moms, pretty stressed out. Add in to those generational stressors the fact my kids regularly play/work at a farm and a ranch, entirely unfamiliar territory for me, and you’ve got a first time momma times ten.

Where do I go from here?

First, I’m going to be okay with the fact I am more uptight than most moms with three kids because I’m still a first time mom, and every age and stage is brand new for me. You will likely find me curled under my desk for a week in August when they ALL THREE start kindergarten at the same time.

But second, I’m going to try to chill. A little. Not to the level of a momma with multiple kids in multiple ages, but to the level of a first time momma a few decades ago. I’m still going to kiss boo-boos and make every recital and tee ball game, but I’m not going to send frantic notes to the head of swimming or Pre-K or soccer or whoever else they encounter if they are having a hard time.

I had LOTS of hard times as a kid. As a result, I’m pretty resilient. I don’t want to take away my kids ability to fail and then bounce back. I’m a huge proponent of failure as a learning technique, and so we first time moms of this millennium are going to need to get comfortable with their frustration and struggles and failures and relationship challenges.

You may have to remind me every now and again though. After all, I am a first time mom {of three}.

In Between the Hard

First Time Mom of Three