Curb Your Enthusiasm star Cheryl Hines knows first-hand the ups and downs of being a mom. Now she’s set to tackle the job on the small screen as well, as one of the stars of ABC’s highly anticipated new show, In The Motherhood. Cheryl, who is mom to 5-year-old daughter Catherine Rose, tells Cookie magazine about her new show, her guiltiest pleasure, and whether she’s a cry-it-out or coddle sort of mom.
On her daughter the comedian: “She’s very funny. She has a great sense of humor. It’s funny when she tries to manipulate me. When it’s time to go to bed, she’ll bargain with me. She’ll tell me she will go to bed if I let her watch her favorite movie. Things like that, where it’s like, ‘Well, that’s not really a negotiation.’”
On her favorite family ritual: “Probably bedtime. My husband and I, if we are both up at the same time, will both lay down with her and read books and hang out with her until she falls asleep. If he’s not there, I’ll do it, and vice versa.”
On her “most frazzled mom moment:” “Going through airport security when Catherine was an infant, I realized I had to take her out of the stroller, collapse the stroller, put my luggage through, take off my shoes – I just didn’t understand how anyone was physically capable of doing that. And nobody seemed very helpful, either. I don’t know how you’re supposed to collapse a baby stroller while you’re holding a baby and luggage. I don’t know – I just remember sweating a lot!”
On the parenting issue she and her husband Paul Young most often disagree about: “Probably about bedtime. I like to have a little consistency when it comes to bedtime, and I’ll try to put her to bed by 8:30 p.m. seven nights in a row. And then I come home, and it’s 10 o’clock, and Paul and Catherine are watching TV on the couch together. It’s like, ‘Ohh Paul.’ It’s not the end of the world, but I think we probably disagree on that a little bit.”
On sleep-deprivation: “When Catherine was a baby, I woke up all the time worrying about whether she was still breathing or not. I feel like I never slept through the night. I still kind of don’t. She sleeps with us a lot, and I worry that I’m cutting off her circulation or that somehow I’ve gotten her tangled in the blanket.”
On why mom knows best: “[My mom] would always say, ‘You’ll see. One of these days, you’ll understand.’ You know, just as far as how difficult it was being a parent. The snapping the fingers and the ‘Quiet, I’m on the phone,’ and things like that. She would always say, ‘One day, you’ll see, you’ll see.’ I didn’t believe her then, but now I believe her.”
On her guilty pleasure: “Playing poker with my friends. It’s kind of bad because it doesn’t really help anybody. It’s not for charity and it’s not for anything other than we like to get together and take each other’s money.”
On whether she subscribes to “coddle” or “cry it out:” “I coddle! Are you kidding me? I cry with her. I’m the worst. Whatever she wants—I just want her to be happy. All I want, every day, is my daughter to be happy. I’m not the strictest mom in the world, but you only live once, right?”
In The Motherhood premieres tonight on ABC.
