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By Root 358 0

with, and then some are just absolute death traps. You can just tell by looking at them—this thing is going to collapse at three o’clock in the morning when we’re all in a deep sleep. I’ll be damned if I’m putting my baby in a death trap. So we had him sleep in the stroller. Probably not the most comfortable night of sleep he ever had, but certainly safer! We just reclined it and had him sleep in it. Of course that still wasn’t good enough for me. Because we had him reclined all the way back, we couldn’t strap him in with the safety belts. We just had to kind of hope that he wouldn’t roll over (he was really little and wasn’t really able to do that, so I wasn’t overly worried about that happening). But regardless, I kept him right by the bed and slept with one eye open to watch him. That was back when he was waking up every two or three hours or so to feed, so I went back to sleep one time and then woke up just in time to see him almost falling out. I was like, “Oh, my God!” He was about a minute from literally falling out of the stroller and flopping on the floor. I don’t know what it was—maybe a mother’s intuition—but by sleeping with one eye open and worrying about it, I was there and able to catch him. Needless to say, I moved him to the bed that night.

As a parent you worry about your child developing as fast as everyone else’s kids, being able to talk or walk at the right time, and, of course, making sure he gets into all of the right classes he needs to. So parentnoia changes from stage to stage. While it’s worrying about safety when they are infants, it turns into developmental worries and keeping up with the Joneses’ kids as they turn into toddlers. I don’t lose too much sleep over it all because I know every baby is different, and knowing that we are very hands-on and it all will play out well in the end gives me patience. Every minute of the day we teach him; we don’t stop teaching him. We are doing it naturally; we know his ability and we don’t try to force anything.

Hank Jr. was brushing his own teeth at seventeen months. He knows what it’s for (so the dentist doesn’t get mad) and what it does (cleans out all of the food), and he brushes upper teeth and bottom teeth.

He loves to know how things work; he loves tools and he knows how to use a screwdriver, a hammer, and a wrench. He naturally loves to be a handyman. He’s technically from Indianapolis and he loves cars! It’s in his blood. He loves to sit in cars. Sometimes we’ll bribe him by saying, “Let’s go take a bath and then we can go into the car.” He’s a year and a half old and very smart, and he knows how to use the iPad and he knows which apps are his; he knows how to use the phone and the buttons to press, and how to use the remote control for the TV—he’s such a boy!

But even as smart as he is and knowing and doing all that stuff (not to mention physically—he is huge and fast and strong!), he doesn’t know how to verbalize or open his mouth to talk. He’s talking but he’s not opening his mouth. That’s the hard part about parenting: knowing when to be concerned. So many parents love to talk about milestones and it’s hard not to compare. They’ll say, “My son started talking at one,” and then I get that little panic in my stomach that something’s wrong with my kid because he doesn’t speak all that much. We are doing everything we can; sometimes I even open his mouth for him, because I know he’s smart, so the first step is getting him to figure out opening the mouth. Right now it’s all just babble and closed-mouth moaning.

Sometimes being a mom requires patience. And sometimes it requires strength. But sometimes it comes with perks! Lately, being a celebrity mom means getting a lot of free stuff, which I do my best to take advantage of (come on, who wouldn’t?). We get gifted so much stuff by companies who not only want to see me in their outfits but also Hank Jr. using their products! I’m not ashamed; I take free strollers, tricycles, and tons of kiddie toys, clothes, and accessories. It’s cool! Sometimes if we don’t need the product, I won’t use it and