Being Kendra (19 page)

Family is family and you only get one. But dollars you can always make more of. Money is only important to me because it provides security for my family, which I didn’t always have. Since the day I kicked cocaine, I started to work my ass off. I could still be doing drugs and I could still be stripping, but I made some good decisions and have luckily gotten out of that world.

There is a part of me deep down that secretly knows to work, work, work, make money, and focus on a career so I don’t
ever
get back to that point. If I sacrifice things along the way, so be it. I
know
I am doing right by myself and my son.

When the opportunity for
Playboy
came up and I got invited to live at the mansion, my mom didn’t fight that. And I gave her money many times. Hef would give us $2,000 every Friday and I would always give her a quarter of that, in cash. Even to this day I have an account that direct-deposits into her account. I don’t even pay attention to it or keep track of it; it’s just automatic. Money means nothing to me; I’ve set up situations like businesses, real estate, and bank accounts (and now a college fund for baby Hank) so we can all be secure. But she still calls me selfish. She’s been receiving financial help from me since the day I started making it in Hollywood. She can have that to the day I die; I’d want her to.

I worry that my mom holds everything against me. The things that have made millions of people across America love me—my honesty, my success, my family, and my personality—are things I think bother my mom the most. It’s sad that I would have to choose between living my life and my mother, but what I hope I can accomplish is to somehow make both coexist together.

Hank’s parents are great people and they don’t judge. They are the type of people who you need surrounding you, the type of people who are there to help, not take. Hank’s parents never do for themselves, they do for other people.

They have never had a problem with my being a celebrity. Hank was scared his parents wouldn’t like me initially because I did
Playboy
(they are very conservative and old-school). He is a huge mama’s boy, so it was hard on me at first because I had to tell Hank I didn’t want his mom in my room folding our laundry all the time like she liked to do for him. I loved the fact that his mom offered to help out like that, and I secretly loved having a parent around in that role. But I also needed to set boundaries because I couldn’t just have Mrs. Baskett roaming around my bedroom whenever she wanted. If I want sex toys lying around in my room that’s my right! I don’t need my mother-in-law coming in and seeing my vibrator sitting on the bed. But Hank was used to having his mom come in his room to iron and hang his clothes. He cried when I told him she couldn’t do that anymore, and when we told her she cried too. But she respected that I was the woman in his life now and that I needed her to have boundaries. She never held that against me. She stepped aside and to this day loves me, Hank, and the baby as much as she possibly can.

As I write this book, Hank’s dad is occasionally staying with us at the house because he has cancer. He comes in every few weeks for extended stays to get chemo treatment. That’s our family dynamic; we know it’s not all about us. If my mom ever needed that attention from us, she could come stay with us.

Would I love to have my mother-daughter relationship back? Yes. Would I want little Hank to have his other grandma in his life more? Yes. I would love for her to be happy with how he’s growing and to be proud of me. After where I came from—from being addicted to drugs and partying and
Playboy
to now having my own home and career and having a son and doing the best job I could have ever imagined doing in that department—I would want my mom to be proud of me. Just to reach out and say, “I’m so proud.” That’s all I need. I have fans who come up to me and say how proud they are. Neighbors come up to me and say it. I say it to Hank all the time. The world tells me, “Well done, Kendra.” The whole world except my mom.

I’ve set up an e-mail account so my mom and grandma can send e-mails to baby Hank, since no one writes letters anymore. It’s an e-mail account that Hank Jr. can have forever and where he will always be able to read e-mails from family members, even after they are gone. So far, only my grandma has sent them.

My mom reached out to Hank when she heard about his dad having cancer. I guess someone told her. Maybe there’s hope after all.

B
eing famous doesn’t exempt you from the neurosis of being a first-time mom. Every new mommy is desperate to make sure that she’s doing everything right and beats herself up whenever she gets it wrong. And, trust me, there have been plenty of times when I have gotten it wrong.

I am not a perfect mom and I don’t play one on TV. But I do a damn good job; not bad for someone who spent the first two-thirds of her life snorting, smoking, and drinking whatever she could get her hands on. I’m not one of these perfect stay-at-home moms cutting the crust off her kids’ peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, and I certainly don’t throw out a slice of bread because there’s a tiny piece of mold on it. Just cut off that part and toast the rest!

I try to be the best mom I can be, focusing on my kid and trying to do it all fast, efficiently, and right. And that’s not to say I’m not going to have a little fun with it along the way. But I’ve learned that once you have a kid, every day is a battle, and no matter how prepared you are, you still never have everything that you need.

I also try to be the most prepared person ever. I always overpack. If we’re going out for a few hours, I pack enough diapers for a week. For one day at the park I pack like I’m going out of the country. What if I get stranded? Hank Jr.’s a baby; he can’t fend for himself, so I need to do that for him. For me it’s all about what-ifs and “just in case.”

But as any mom knows, you can make sure you’ve got diapers, bottles, cream, food, milk, formula, pacifiers, toys, bibs, medicine, and a change of clothes but there’s always something you forget, without fail. I view motherhood like preparing for battle. Diapers, cream, and food are my armor. If I’ve got all of that, I win the battle. I bring extra food and diapers “just in case” we are stranded for forty-eight hours somewhere. I wish I could walk out the door with just my sunglasses and keys, but those days are over. My pockets are full, my diaper bag is packed, and my head is cluttered! Who have I become? I’m hardly the Kendra that Hugh Hefner discovered or Hank Baskett married, but people change. And caring for baby Hank is my number one priority.

Am I overdoing it? Probably. I guess I overcompensate because the whole world just assumes I’m some dumb Playboy Bunny who got knocked up, so I want to prove everyone wrong.

One time I was in the only place on earth where you can’t just go and get whatever you need—on a plane. We were on a charter flight from Indianapolis to Miami for the Super Bowl with just the wives, kids, and some team staff. So here I am on the plane, and it’s the one and only time I forgot baby wipes. Wipes: the must-have for all things involving poop, pee, throw-up, cleaning, wiping, and everything that could possibly be wet, crusty, or smelly. I was like, “Oh, my God, no wipes!” My body temperature immediately began to rise, my face turned red, and my heart started beating fast. Real fast. I was minutes away from a nasty case of mom hives and, of course, right while I was in the middle of this panic attack baby Hank pooped badly. Real bad. Like a four-alarm poop, with odors spreading from row to row. So I had to improvise and get a pile of cocktail napkins from the stewardess (can I get a drink with that too, please?)—or in this case a whole box! It’s kind of silly, having a panic attack about not having baby wipes, but I made out just fine. I just had to spend a few minutes doing a little extra scrub on baby Hank’s butt cheeks. Things like wipes just make it easier to take care of a child, and we freak out when we don’t have them. But I know decades ago wipes didn’t exist and everyone made do. Yes, I was crazed, yes, everyone was staring at me while munching on their snacks and drinks, but looking back everything was fine. And he got a clean tushy in the end.

Being a mom has completely transformed me. Freaking out over baby wipes and packing enough diapers to cover the butts of an army of babies is part of that paranoid, overprotective, neurotic frenzy that we moms all seem to have in common nowadays. We just want a better life for our kids. We try to be prepared for everything. But at what cost? About a thousand days ago I was prancing around the Playboy Mansion with not a care in the world. Now any time I walk into a room I automatically look for the safe zone. That’s my latest “parentnoia.” In case there’s an earthquake, I need to know exactly how to get the hell out of there. It’s like I’m in a video game, scoping out the lay of the land, eyes and red lasers focusing on the exits and windows and doors. I always have to have a safe zone and plan an escape. I even travel with electrical socket covers everywhere I go so the baby doesn’t accidentally get electrocuted. I feel like I have eight eyes in the back of my head, looking at everything suspiciously and always wanting to know who’s around me.

I also have these new OCD habits that came with motherhood. I spend half of my day obsessed with disinfecting everything around the house, spraying, mopping, washing, polishing, and, of course, vacuuming so we all are breathing in good air. And we have humidifiers running all over the house, one in the baby’s room, one in the bedroom, and one in the living room, and I turn them up to the max like it’s Miami in there. I know that’s overdoing it, but I honestly want nothing but the cleanest, safest, most perfect environment for my baby. Plus, when I’m vacuuming and cleaning, I get immediate results, and how often can you say that?

Since I became a mom, I’ve become a little paranoid about baby Hank’s overall safety, and I’m very cautious about going out alone with him. Because of what I do and who I am I feel like I have a huge red bull’s-eye on my forehead. I’m not ignorant of the fact that everywhere I go a lot of people recognize me. So all bets are off if I’m with my baby. It’s not that I don’t want to interact with my fans—I do—but when I’m in “mommy mode,” that’s it, I’m being a mom. I’m not Kendra when that happens—I’m Mom. As a mom my number one priority is to protect my baby, and my ability to do that is completely compromised when people (strangers!) approach me when I am out with the baby and want to talk or stop me. How do I know their intentions?

There are a lot of freaks out there and I don’t trust the world nowadays. I watch Nancy Grace every night. Hank yells at me for watching it as much as I do and tells me it makes me paranoid. But by watching reports about kids being abducted or women being assaulted, I feel like I’m more aware of what is going on in the world and able to build this protective shell around my family. By being prepared and aware of what is going on around me, I can be the mama bear I need to be. The world is so different from the way it was when we were growing up. We don’t know who’s living next to us anymore, let alone who’s fixing the roof or mowing our neighbors’ lawns. So yes, I’m defensive. Hank thinks that paranoia forces me to lead a little bit more of a sheltered life than is actually healthy, and I need to work on that.

In most of the places we’ve lived over the past year and a half, I didn’t have the balls to go out much with baby Hank and walk him anywhere by myself. Hank always did that. I just didn’t feel safe walking on the street by myself with the baby. Even if I wasn’t famous, never mind the fact that a million naked photos of me are floating around on the Internet, I’d just be some little blond mom walking her baby. There are a lot of creeps out there and I’d be defenseless. Hank—he’s a six-foot-four-inch NFL athlete; I’ll let him take the baby out for a walk. No one’s going to mess with him. It’s so sad, but I just don’t feel safe. You’ll notice that in any of the paparazzi pictures of me and the baby outside, I’m usually with Hank—part husband, part bodyguard.

One of the things that I worry about every night before I go to sleep is whether I’m raising my child to be the best that he can be. I think I am, and I work hard at it. But it’s not always easy and I can’t always say the world caters to my needs. So sometimes you just have to improvise. Life, as we all know, is not perfect, with the neat little front yard and the white picket fence. I worry a lot about safety, and health, and money. When you’ve been in danger of losing all of them or have at any point lived without any of them, you tend to want to protect yourself from that; you never want to go back. I married an NFL athlete, starred in my own hit cable TV show, and had a bestselling book, and during all of that time I basically lived out of a suitcase. So much for the white picket fence. Money can’t buy you happiness and apparently can’t always buy you a place to call home either! But I had my family, and I’ll take that over a stupid fence any day.

While life was really stressful during those times, there are some things we as parents just have to do, those “you just gotta do it” moments of parenthood. One that comes to mind is the night we were sleeping in a hotel and I had to make Hank Jr. sleep in his stroller. Babies can sleep in strollers for a nap, or even a few hours if necessary. In fact the last thing you want to do is have a baby who can
only
sleep in his crib. You need them to be able to fall asleep anywhere so you can go about your business and not be tied to your home. But I had never put Hank Jr. in a stroller for a whole night’s sleep, from seven
P.M.
until seven
A.M.
! Until I
had
to
.

The hotel that we were staying at in Miami during the Super Bowl in 2010 gave us a crib, and it wasn’t exactly something that I would ever put my baby in. Some cribs are cute and safe, some are just temporary pieces of plastic you can live 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 we’ll just donate it to charity, like an L.A.-based women’s shelter where moms in need can give it to their children. But if it’s stuff we need, I use it. Strollers these days can cost $500 or more if you want a really snazzy one, so when a company offers one, I’m not too proud to take it.

Hell, sometimes I wear free clothes I get sent too. Plus it saves time on shopping! Some mornings, I’ll look in my closet and see something new that Eddie put in there because someone sent it to my agency or my business manager. If someone sent you ten free gorgeous pairs of jeans in your size that fit you perfectly, wouldn’t you wear them? Companies find a way to get their products to me. They’ll send boxes of clothes, books, jewelry, or alcohol. Sometimes they’ll see their product on my show that we use, like a drink or a type of snack, and they’ll send cartloads of it to me.