One Year After the Baby Boom
It was just another hectic day in the life of Irene Zozaya.
Desirae needed a bottle, Diana needed changing, and Deborah was just plain fussy. To make matters more complicated, a visitor happened to drop by for a chat just when the 1-year-old triplets were supposed to bed down for their afternoon nap.
“It can get pretty chaotic around here if we don’t follow our routine,” said Zozaya, 35, as she took a break on a couch. “There is always something to do.”
A year ago Tuesday, Irene and Don Zozaya became the proud parents of triplets, beating odds of 50,000 to 1. After having had two boys, the couple had begun praying for a girl.
“I guess we prayed too hard,” Irene Zozaya said Thursday.
After a year, the Zozayas know the joys--and the pitfalls--of rearing identical triplets. They get the inevitable stares and the dumb questions. They also get the immeasurable joy of holding three babies at once.
Routine and organization are the words that most often come to mind when the Zozayas are asked how they both manage to work and run a household while raising triplets and the two older boys, Daniel, 11, and David, 6.
Maintaining a strict schedule has even given them time to launch the little doe-eyed toddlers on a budding Hollywood career that has included appearances on TV shows.
“You have to stick to the schedule,” Irene Zozaya stressed. “If you miss one thing, the next day is going to be crazy.”
Irene, who works part time at a Bank of America branch, and Don, 36, who owns his own construction company, knew their lives would be changed for good when they discovered that they were going to be the parents of triplets.
But they had no idea the extent to which they would have to alter their lifestyle. Watching television in the early evenings is now a thing of the past, as is a quick trip to the store together or a Sunday drive.
With a lot of practice, the Zozayas have learned to gather the car seats, pack the diaper bags and triple-seat stroller into the car, and gather the tribe in 30 minutes flat.
“You can never just do something at the spur of the moment,” Irene Zozaya said.
It’s the simple things that make life a daily challenge.
Try wheeling the long gray stroller through a supermarket or into a restaurant without attracting too much attention, for instance.
“It’s just like driving a limousine,” Don Zozaya quipped. “It’s not as easy as it looks to steer.”
The inevitable gawks and comments from people have become routine, Irene Zozaya said. A trip to Knott’s Berry Farm, for instance, made the family an instant hit among tourists, who asked batteries of questions and taped the children with video cameras.
Some people want to know how they can tell the triplets apart. Others offer sympathy.
“Some lady told me, ‘You poor thing. How do you do it?’ ” Irene Zozaya said. “I’ve learned to take it with a grain of salt.”
The Zozayas are hoping to parlay the attention the children have garnered in supermarkets and amusement parks into a Hollywood career.
When the children were about 6 weeks old, the Zozayas’ lives changed even further when an acquaintance--the mother of twins--hooked them up with a Costa Mesa talent agent.
Since then, the triplets have appeared on the TV series “Star Trek: The Next Generation.” They will soon appear in a pilot series entitled “Moe’s World” and an episode of NBC’s “Life Stories,” in which the toddlers take turns playing one daughter of a 14-year-old girl.
Identical twins or triplets are routinely used in Hollywood to play one child. When one gets tired or fussy, another can stand in, Irene Zozaya said.
She said she hopes to see her daughters continue in show business when they get older. But she has yet to see if they will show the talents required of older children.
For now, she is enjoying her children and the experience that being the mother of identical triplets brings.
“It’s just fun to see your daughters on TV,” Irene Zozaya said. “For me to think that all this was going to happen to me, I never would have believed it. But all this happened for a reason.”