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Gindi Vincent

The Dish on Career, Fashion, Faith, and Family

triplets

A Decade of Triplets

October 2, 2019 by Gindi Leave a Comment

I’m a little late in writing this post.  Maybe because it felt so momentous and I didn’t feel I had momentous words. 

How can I sum up in one little post the past decade and the years leading up to this miraculous decade?

How could I capture the full decade of my yearning to be married with kids but staying stubbornly single despite my searching? 

How do I write about the years of dating between meeting Bray (nearly 16 years ago) and the time we looked at each other on that church alter saying I do?    

How is it possible to share the deepest soul agony we both had in hearing we couldn’t have kids and those years of trying with only failure to show? 

Then. 

The moment that sparked this decade’s long adventure. 

The moment there were two lines.  And I took another test, two more lines.  Then another test, PREGNANT.  (I wouldn’t know the irony of three tests at the time.)

Then Bray walking into our bedroom, where I’d stayed in bed for a week in hope of improving our chances, and him opening a little package.  Inside, a tiny onesie that said My other car seat is on daddy’s tractor.  I can still see his face.  This disbelieving hope of a final yes. 

A nearly 33 week pregnancy, the last six weeks spent in bed, the last two in the hospital.  The decision to take them early to preserve my health when the preeclampsia took hold.  The month in the NICU with three little people and several big scares all while I tried to heal from the emergency C-section.  Taking each one home individually, first the eldest, then the baby, while my heart broke at leaving little bit behind an extra week to recover from an infection.  All came home on monitors and we had the chaos of weeks that followed, another emergency NICU stay, the holidays, my return to work right after the night nanny left.  It’s all a blur.  I don’t know who rolled over first.  Or who sat up first.  I know the eldest climbed out of his bed the first but that wasn’t for another year plus. 

The first year, Bray and I clinging to each other as we worked and parented and did absolutely nothing else because there was no space for anything except for these little people.  They took over.  They grew.  They improved.  They smiled.  The gurgled.  They sat up in little Bumbo seats and had triplet pow-wows. 

The second year, Bray and I tried to figure out how to do “us” in the middle of the hard and exhausting work.  We fought and fell apart and fell back together.  That happened at least three separate times in this decade.  Where we didn’t know how we’d get back to each other and we always did.  God always worked a way for us to get back to each other. 

And these people.  Oh we loved them so much then and we love them so much more now. 

They are so very beautiful.  Their hands that will still hold ours.  Their foreheads we get to kiss after ‘bednight’ prayers.  Their hair that smells like chlorine or sweat or shampoo depending on when we hug them close.  Their eyes that stare into ours – welling with tears when hurt descends and sparkling with laughter when we dance or cook or exchange jokes. 

That first beautiful boy who came out.  Our Baby A.  With his big hands and feet and head, like a Labrador puppy.  Oh he is so persistent.  He works at anything he wants.  He wants to be the very best.  He can suffer crushing disappointment or sadness or self-chastising when he isn’t, but he just keeps working.  That eldest – confident, except when he’s not; bold, except when he’s worried; tenacious and athletic and competitive and loving and utterly kissable and challenging and fascinating and outgoing and passionate and smart and the first one to completely capture my heart. 

Then the lone baby girl.  Baby B.  She was squished right in the middle of the boys but held her own, kicking them in the head on our ultrasound to make herself known, and still doing it today.  She is the most introverted, needing time and self-reflection.  She struggles knowing what a bright and gifted young woman she is becoming, but she remains fierce and loyal and committed and active and kind and generous and adventurous and observant and thrill-seeking and thinking and lovely inside and out.  In her early years, I said she was my cat and the boys were my dogs because she just needed someone to feed her and change her and then she was just fine, thank you very much.  But her independence and desire for peace, while still strong, has abated enough so she loves and cuddles and develops deep friendships. 

Ah, and last, but most certainly not least, came Baby C.  He was the smallest all throughout the pregnancy.  Our doctor even asked us to consider “reducing” our crew when we found out we were pregnant with three.  What a loss the world would have without this bright Baby C.  His lungs were a little underdeveloped at birth which has caused him to struggle some with asthma but you would never know by the way he plays and works.  He will have his heart broken because he will give it away. He is bright and hard-working and diligent and empathetic and curious and loving and observant and also athletic and committed and sensitive. 

We did not make them who they are.  God did.  We get the honor of getting to know them better than everyone else, what an extraordinary gift to know them best, and of raising them to be generous and curious and grateful and seekers of truth and justice. 

We have failed often in this decade.  We will fail in the decade to come.  But they know we love them more than words can say.  They know we will always show up, no matter what.  And they know the five of us are in this thing together, for better or worse, and we will carry each other through the hard and cheer each other through the joy. 

One decade as a family of five.  It seems more than I can even take in.  I am ever so grateful for every single day.

Filed Under: Family Tagged With: birthday, decade, triplets

First Time Mom of Three

May 25, 2015 by Gindi Leave a Comment

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.

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card14backBut 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}.

Filed Under: Family Tagged With: motherhood, triplets

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