Being Kendra_ Cribs, Cocktails, and Getting My Sexy Back - Kendra Wilkinson [2]
Teaching baby Hank how to walk at a very early age!
Chapter 1
Motherhood 2.0:
THE PLIGHT OF THE MODERN-DAY MOM
Is this yours or the baby’s?”
My husband, Hank, held up a tiny jersey for me to look at. He hunched over open boxes in our bedroom and, of course, a big pile of my clothes mixed in with some of the baby’s things. When I replied that it was mine, he winked and put it in a box labeled KENDRA’S CLOTHES. We were finishing up a grueling few days of packing our Studio City apartment—the most recent in a long string of apartments and houses in the last two years. But this move was the most exciting, and hopefully the last. We were moving into our first family house—our forever home—in Calabasas, California.
They say home is where the heart is. Well, my heart is with my family, but I still wanted that permanent safe haven for my one-and-a-half-year-old son, Hank Jr. And for myself.
Moving in was a monumental occasion because other than my marriage and my family I had very little else to call my own. I needed somewhere to put down roots. It took us a while to find the perfect house—someplace where paparazzi can’t get into the gates, stalkers can’t camp out, and random people can’t drive by to look and say, “Hey! It’s Kendra’s house!” I finally felt like the house had everything we were looking for, but for me the biggest selling point was when I walked into the community and heard the sound of children playing outside and splashing around in the pool next door. It was music to my ears. And it really was the main reason why I bought my house. We looked in a million different communities around Los Angeles, some of them high-end with lots of celebrity residents, but one thing was missing: kids. And that’s not right for my family. I wanted to give Hank Jr. a neighborhood full of kids his age and a family-oriented safe place for him to grow up, not to mention fulfilling my own needs of a five-bedroom house with a pool. It’s big by normal standards, but it’s well proportioned. Nothing about it is over-the-top or extravagant—it’s a home not a mansion.
Hank spent a lot of time at the house getting everything ready for us to move in—painting every room and dealing with a couple small fixes here and there. I was rehearsing and filming for Dancing with the Stars, so he worked his ass off trying to get everything in place, including baby-proofing. We had to make sure nothing about our new home would be a danger to baby Hank. The pool is fenced all the way around with metal bars. We like to barbecue a lot, so we have caps on the on/off switch for the grills since Hank Jr. loves to press buttons. We put covers over anything that gets hot, we installed door handle locks on all the doors to make sure Hank Jr. can’t get out, and we put in a metal gate at the top and bottom of our stairway. And, of course, socket covers all over the house.
One of the last times Hank went to our dream house before we officially moved in, he took baby Hank with him and the next-door neighbors invited Hank Jr. over to play with their kids! That made me so happy, I just started to cry. Someone could offer me a million dollars to take a different house and I wouldn’t care. Money is just money, but when I heard that there were kids baby Hank’s age right next door, I was thrilled. He’ll probably grow up with them and go to school with them. This is where lifelong bonding begins. I imagined his wonderful childhood unfolding in that neighborhood. It’s the best thing I could have heard.
And since we moved in, I’ve met all of the neighbors and they are awesome. I know I made the right choice. Hank was over there a lot more than me because I was on DWTS, so he got a head start on meeting everyone. But after DWTS, I finally got to know them all. We’d run into each other on the street, we’d see each other in our yards, and we’d just start talking about the neighborhood—it’s something we all had in common! It was all just so easy. We felt like we’d been living there for twenty years.
This was so important to me because for so