Being Kendra_ Cribs, Cocktails, and Getting My Sexy Back - Kendra Wilkinson [18]
None of that was easy, but our troubles culminated in the summer of 2010 when we had made the decision to pack up our lives temporarily and leave L.A. to move to Philadelphia for Hank. It was his second time playing for the Eagles, and we thought it would be a long-term job for him. We’d film the show there, move into an apartment, meet some families, and live a fun city life. Not forever. But for as long as Hank was with the Eagles, which we thought might be a couple of years. It didn’t work out the way we’d planned, and when Hank got cut in September (just a few months after Hank Jr. and I had relocated to the East Coast), our world was thrown into a tailspin.
When we first arrived in Philly, the show told us we were going to stay in a gorgeous hotel until our apartment was ready. Wow, hotel living—not too shabby! Lobbies, restaurants, bellmen, concierges—the full white-glove treatment! We were like, “Okay. Sign us up!” They said, “The place is beautiful, it’s amazing, with room service, a penthouse, and all that.” But when we got to the hotel and checked into the room I turned to Hank and said, “What the fuck?” We had no kitchen; it was literally a plain old hotel room where I couldn’t cook for my baby. So, in order to eat, we had to order room service and pay for everything. As a mother I felt completely unprepared for this. I was stripped of the tools I needed to properly take care of my family. Dinners shouldn’t be served with packets of ketchup on a roll-away table.
I was the star of a hit show on E!. I had worked my ass off to get where I was in life and Hank was an NFL athlete—so why were we living in a hotel room? We were there for three days before I started to go crazy. Claustrophobic doesn’t even begin to cover it. The three of us—and all of our stuff, including Hank Jr.’s toys and essentials, and my clothes—could hardly fit in the room. There was no space for him to play or to move around. I lost my cool and said to Hank: “Get me the fuck out of here right now or I’m leaving you.” I threatened Hank and gave him an ultimatum. This was a wife speaking to her husband, a mom saying we need a better life for our child. Was it over? No. Was it close? Well, it was pretty bad. But all he had to do was fix it.
What people don’t know is that Hank actually had a house in Philly all picked out for us. The show’s producers wanted us to live in a condo or an apartment (or a hotel apparently) so they could execute their “Kendra comes to the city of Brotherly Love” angle. Fun angle, bad execution. If Hank had only told production that he already had a house, we could have filmed there! He gets shy sometimes and lets others control him and push him around because he’s too nice of a guy, but his being a wimp really put us into this horrible predicament. It jeopardized our happiness and our safety (we had hotel guests pounding on our door at all hours), and I wasn’t going to stand for it. Sometimes you just have to light a fire under your husband’s ass.
I freaked out on him. I made him call everyone involved with the Eagles and E! and basically said, “Fix it!” (File that under things he should have done before his family moved across the country.) It was Hank’s responsibility to put a decent roof over his family’s heads. Sure, we were there for the show, but we could have argued and arranged to live elsewhere or figured out a way to make it work for the show and, most important, us. He moved us to Philly without checking out the living situation. Show me any woman who would put up with that shit. I had no home; the baby had no home, no kitchen, and nothing stable or grounded. I said to Hank, “Get it through your head: We have no home right now. The baby has nowhere to eat and sleep. What is wrong with you? You are failing.”
Finally,