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Nicole Sullivan on Brotherly Love: 'We Don't Force It'

Milton Ventura/Celebrity Photo

The transition from one child to two can be tough, but Nicole Sullivan says it’s made easier by sleep deprivation! “[It] keeps you from being able to process what you’ve just done to your life,” she jokes in a new interview with Spotlight to Nightlight, “because if you stop and think about it, this is what insane people would do to themselves.”

When she’s feeling overwhelmed, Nicole says she keeps her eye on “the big picture.”

“Boy, when they’re both in school, this is going to be great. They’re going to play soccer together…then it’s going to be fun. Right now is just the really hard part.”

To prepare 2-year-old Dashel Pierce for the arrival of Beckett Edward, now 5 weeks, Nicole says she and husband Jason Packham applied a less-is-more approach. “We read a bunch of books…[but] he seemed to be disinterested, and we sort of went with that,” she explains.

Noting that “if your husband brought home a new wife and said ‘Don’t worry, you guys are going to be best friends’ you’d be like, ‘No we’re not,’” Nicole says that the couple instead “let [Dashel] have his distance from the baby.” She adds,

“We don’t force it. We just let him sort of deal with [Beckett] on his own time.”

As for the biggest surprise of life with two-under-three? Just how little knowledge Nicole retained from the first time around. “I feel like I’m doing it brand new all over again,” she admits. “It’s like, ‘Oh, why did he vomit all over himself?’ Oh right, I didn’t burp him.” The 39-year-old Rita Rocks actress says that some things haven’t changed, however.

“Let’s be honest. You made it up with the first one. I read all the books, and in the end, you make it up. I’m making it up again.”

Calling motherhood “a series of guilt trips you have to navigate through,” Nicole misses the one-on-one time she enjoyed with Dashel, and wishes she had more of the same for Beckett. “I want to be with the new baby and take the time and look into his eyes, and make all the baby faces and bond the way I did with Dash,” she explains, “but I’ve got another little boy looking at me going, ‘Can we go to My Gym?’”

Although those moments are tough, Nicole says that she would never say or do anything to dissuade a mother from pursuing a bigger family.

“People are going to try to scare you…Just do what you do, and it will all work out. Don’t let people panic you. Don’t let them be like, ‘Oh my God, it’s like having 17 kids.’ Just relax. Put one foot in front of the other, and it will all be fine.”

Source: Spotlight to Nightlight

– Missy

Hilary Swank on Motherhood: 'When the Time Is Right, I'll Know'

Courtesy Marie Claire

Million Dollar Baby star Hilary Swank has babies on the brain — but the Oscar winner says, for now, there is a different kind of baby taking center stage.

“For me, my career is like, for lack of a better word, a baby,” she tells Marie Claire. “I always knew that I wanted to act, since I was 7-years-old.” For just as long, however, Hilary concedes she has been “thinking about the day” she would become a mom. She adds,

“When the time is right, I’ll know. I am aware that next week, I turn 35. But I am also aware that the timing has to be right.”

She’s already learning what it’s like to live with a child, by way of boyfriend John Campisi‘s 6-year-old son Sam, and beginning to consider her choices more carefully as a result. A self-confessed fan of sleeping in the nude — “I just toss and turn too much…if I’m in clothes, I get all twisted up,” she explains — Hilary predicts that the practice will be coming to an end soon.

“You wonder at what age you should stop walking around nude,” she muses. “Every morning he comes into the bedroom, and you’re just nude.” Hilary is quick to point out, however,

“He doesn’t look twice; he doesn’t think about it yet.”

Source: Marie Claire, November issue

– Missy