Source: Jason LaVeris / Getty
While some families have been forced to be apart during this quarantine time, others have been lucky enough to be able to come together and spend quality time, making some memories that likely won’t be forgotten anytime soon. For Love and Hip Hop: New York stars Yandy Smith and husband Mendeecees Harris, they were lucky enough to be able to get the whole gang together, including all of the kids, for a family photo.
The couple and their shared kids, Skylar and Omare, joined big brothers Aasim and little Mendeecees, as well as bonus daughter Infinity Gilyard and Mendeecees’ nephew, for a series of photos, which the patriarch of the family captioned, “This is what’s called abounding happiness.”
The image comes after Mendeedees was released from prison in January, completing four years inside. It also comes after some Internet sleuths wondered why Infinity seemed to be appearing in Yandy’s photos less and less following his release. On LHHNY, there were initially concerns about whether or not he, as a felon, could share a space with the teen. Those rules were only in place, however, for those who had been convicted of crimes against children and violent crimes. He was imprisoned over drug trafficking.
The teen, whom Yandy has mentored since she was in the seventh grade and welcomed into her home around 2018, shut down rumors that she was somehow put out once Mendeecees came home.
“She ain’t kick me out. Are you dumb? She’s my family for life…that’s from now until whenever,” Infinity said in a YouTube video earlier this month. “So what y’all don’t know is I live in a dorm Monday through Friday then I go home on the weekends, Sometimes I don’t go home because I have basketball practice. So a lot of the things she do are over the weekend. Most of the time I’m in basketball, doing something with school or I’m being pulled in different directions, so no, she didn’t kick me out.”
“I spend time with my biological family and I spend time with my chosen family,” she added. “And yeah, that’s just pretty much the gist of it. That’s still my mother, we’re still like two peas in a pod. Nothing more, nothing less.”
Yandy also said in an interview with us from January, prior to Mendeecees’s release, that despite past issues with the mothers of his kids, everyone was able to ensure that the children would come together for birthdays and holidays and continue the bond their father intended for them to have.
“That’s how it’s supposed to be. These kids grew up together,” she said. “Their father was adamant about them being raised together, so I think sometimes us women, we just get in our own way. I think that when the progress, development and love for your children are at the forefront of relationships, then you figure things out, and I think that’s exactly what we’ve been able to do.”
