Brooklyn Decker is having a hard time accepting that her little girl is growing up.
Decker, 36, couldn’t hold back tears during a Thursday, August 17, Instagram video taken after she dropped daughter Stevie, 5, off at kindergarten for the first time. In the clip, the model’s husband, Andy Roddick, could be heard asking her, “What’s going on?” and “Did you get bad news?” from behind the camera.
A distraught Decker eventually replied through tears, “Stevie just went to kindergarten,” prompting Roddick, 40, to let out a fake sob. The Grace and Frankie actress captioned the video: “It was worse than I could have imagined. For her, it was perfect.”
Decker and Roddick, who tied the knot in 2009, also share son Hank, 7. Although Decker was heartbroken to send her youngest off to school, she’s been candid in the past about the challenges of working while parenting young children.
“It’s super exhausting,” she told Dannijo in August 2018 when Stevie was 7 months old. “The biggest thing — and I’m trying to be more forgiving of myself and this may not be everyone’s experience — but as a mom, you constantly feel like you’re letting someone down.”
She continued: “Either you’re letting your kids down because you’re working or you’re letting your coworkers down because you’re with your kids, or you’re letting down your husband because you have to travel, and he’s there manning the children.”
Decker further elaborated on how having kids had changed her dynamic with Roddick in April 2022. “It does become hilariously transactional,” she exclusively told Us Weekly at the time. “You’re like, ‘I’ve got the kids, you go buy the tampons, go get the diapers.’ … It’s very [much] like making a game plan for a football game. You’re drawing the X’s and someone is going to tackle this job and the other one’s going to take care of this.”
Roddick shared a similar sentiment three years prior.
“Honestly, it’s not romantic, but you have to schedule [time for your spouse],” the former pro tennis player told Us in August 2019. “Honestly, kind of everything revolves around your kids, and a couple of careers. We do try to do a good job of saying, ‘Hey, next Wednesday we’re going to go out and enjoy each other.’ Enjoy the silence of no children around, and enjoy not picking stuff up off the floor, unless we do it.’ So, scheduling matters when you’re this far out and have a couple of kids.”
Roddick has also revealed that Stevie takes more after him while Hank has more in common with Decker.
“I think our daughter is pretty fiery [which] I tended to be on the court. I think we’re both pretty stubborn so maybe I think our daughter might be a little more like me,” he told Us in August 2022. “Our son is very sweet and empathetic like his mother, but I think there are bits of both us in both of them.”
The athlete added he doesn’t know whether he and Decker will have more children. “I normally just follow orders from my wife so we’ll see what happens,” he said.
