Invincible - Part 2

I have historically not been much of a joiner.

Oh, I have my pet organizations that I belong to. But after having been invited into a couple of prolonged bad experiences, I've gotten a little picky about the ones I choose.

So I'll admit that I was a little leery about going to a convention for families of triplets. First things first: the only practical way to get to the convention was to fly. Just thinking about that nearly gave me an ulcer.

And then there's the whole business of sitting in a hotel ballroom with people you don't know, talking about subjects that are either too vapid to merit attention, or too personal to talk about with this group of strangers.

And then there's the banquets and parties and kids' games and small talk.

So I try to be a little careful. But my wife has been a religious reviewer and participant on tripletconnection.com, a web site that has provided her with tremendous amounts of great advice from parents who have already lived the life we are just now experiencing. They helped her through the pregnancy, through the early days and sleepless nights, and still through the transition from crawling to walking, and from formula to solid foods.

Even as devoted as she has become, we still probably wouldn't have gone. Except that the TripletConnection convention organizers were looking for workshop facilitators. I've done some of that, and I thought it might be fun to run the workshop for fathers of triplets - forgotten as we often are in the whole multiples discussion (unless you're Jon, in which case you and Kate have generated enough multiples media attention for a decade).

I offered to do it, and the gracious Susan Holloway took me up on the offer. And with that, we were off to California.

I've read about the connections that people forge in difficult times, and through shared circumstances. Maybe in the way that two combat veterans need no introduction or small talk - they can simply plunge into a conversation as though they've known each other their whole lives.

So it is with parents of multiples. We met the first family at the convention while standing in the lobby waiting for an elevator. They are quads from Ohio, in their early 20s, and they are the most remarkable young people. Our elevator came and went while we talked with them.

And before we could catch the next elevator, we met a couple from California whose triplets are five months old. Leave aside for the moment that the father reminded me very much of an old baseball buddy of mine. What surprised me is that when he began talking about the last five months of his life, I knew right where he was. I've been in those shoes.

That night I had the opportunity to tell a little bit of our story, a speaking opportunity that normally requires a lot of background and explanation. Not every audience understands what you mean when you say you had to build a fence in your family room to trap the triplets. At this convention, they just smiled at each other and recalled their own fences.

The next day I facilitated the Super Dads workshop - a candid exchange for men only. An opportunity, I hoped, for men to talk about the challenges they face, and to share some of the solutions we've developed. Our 90 minutes passed in a blink, and I think we could easily have stayed another 90 minutes. Our discussion was entertaining, our solutions were enlightening, and our issues were deeply personal and universal.

A great group of men, who are doing an outstanding job of dealing with the difficulties - and enjoying the blessings - of having triplets. I am grateful that they let me share some small portion of their lives.

I'm glad my wife convinced me to call about facilitating the workshop. We met so many wonderful people, from California and Ohio and Washington and England. And we made connections so effortlessly. One triplet dad we met had no issue with just taking one of our boys out of the stroller and playing with him. The family from England took Luke during breakfast and played with him for the better part of an hour.

And we let them. It felt a little odd to be so comfortable with a group of strangers.

In some ways, they aren't strangers at all. Maybe we are combat veterans of a sort.

And we are clearly more alike than we are different.

Invincible - Part 1

Editor's Note: We didn't die, or move to a country without Internet access. We are still here. It's just that the boys can move around now. A lot. And we are tired. But we'll write more often. There is so much to say...


We could see it in their eyes.

And the closer we got to our gate, the more clearly we saw it.

The TSA officials in the security lines were fascinated by the spectacle. At first they wondered how would they get all of these people, and all of their stuff, through security. But they jumped right in, passing babies and carseats and the triplet stroller through the metal detectors, and reuniting us with our children and belongings on the other side.

Passersby were delighted, stopping us to look at the boys and compliment the girls. Triplets? they would ask. Yes, we would answer again. Fraternal. And no, their sisters are not triplets. And yes, we're glad they're ours, too (and not yours...).

It got a little repetitive, but it was wonderful. All of those people who were so interested in our little traveling circus.

As we got closer to our gate, though, their attitudes began to change. Their smiles were a little less open. A little short on the sparkle. A little more guarded. And worried. You could almost see them praying silently behind their fake grins that we wouldn't be on their flight.

It wasn't until we reached our gate that we really began to see it. Because that's when it hit them, those poor cursed souls sitting at the Frontier gate at Denver International Airport who had just realized that we were getting on their flight. All eight of us - three little girls, triplet boys, my wife, and me.

They were very nice. Cute family, they'd say. Adorable babies, they told us. And are these their sisters? Oh what a wonderful family!

I appreciated and agreed with everything they said. But at the same time, I was sure they were offering up that one last prayer, their final hope, the possibility - however slim - that we wouldn't be seated in their row.

Well, not to worry. We took up an entire row ourselves. My wife, two of the boys and our oldest daughter on one side of the plane. And me, one of the boys, and our two younger daughters on the other side.

It was our first flight as a family - slightly more than two hours in the air to Orange County, CA, for the TripletConnection Convention. And there were babies screaming on that flight, as well as on our return flight to Denver.

But it wasn't our babies doing the screaming. Nope. They slept most of the way to California, and they slept from gate to gate on the way home. Our advice: plan your flights around nap time.

So now we think we are invincible. There isn't anything we can't do.

I mean, we traveled successfully from Cheyenne to Orange County and back (and by successfully we mean that we returned with all of our children and most of our wits) with three babies, three bickering girls, four Hyundai-sized suitcases (one of which was packed almost entirely with food and booster seats), one triple-decker stroller, and three bags of seashells from Newport Beach.

And in the meantime, we spent five wonderful days on the beach and attended a terrific convention for families with triplets or more - there were two sets of quads and one set of quintuplets at the convention.

We understand the look in their eyes. We probably wouldn't have wanted to sit next to us on an airplane either.

But our kids were amazing. And we feel invincible.