Jessica Simpson Says 11-Month-Old Daughter Birdie Mae Is a 'Definitely a Daddy's Girl'
Jessica Simpson’s daughter Birdie Mae is almost a year old — and she can’t get enough of daddy!
Just days away from her daughter’s first birthday, Simpson chatted with PEOPLE about her youngest child “who’s all smiles all the time” and husband Eric Johnson’s “sexy” parenting.
“She’s about to be 1. I can’t believe it,” the 39-year-old tells PEOPLE as part of her collaboration with Keebler and Make-A-Wish Foundation. “I don’t want her to grow up too fast. She’s already crawling around everywhere and now she trying to walk and I’m like ‘hold on, hold on, just keep crawling.’”
“She is definitely a daddy’s girl,” Simpson says, laughing. “I have to make sure he doesn’t walk in the room so I can have time with Birdie. She’ll just want Eric because Eric is so big and he can make her fly around the room. I’m like, ‘mom is not that tall’ and I can’t do that!”
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And it seems like the little one has inherited her mom and aunt Ashlee Simpson’s love for singing.
“She loves music and I think it’s because I was in a very creative mode and I wrote the book while I was pregnant with her and I also was singing,” the mom of three explains. “With my other kiddos I totally took a break from life and just wanted to create life and live a normal life. Birdie has this whole vibe about her. I literally call her my little songbird.”
“Even this morning, she was like ‘La la la la la’ and I was trying to get her to sing my sister’s song,” Simpson says, referencing to Ashlee’s 2004 hit “La La.” “You make me want to La La!”
Simpson also shares that Johnson, 40 — with whom she shares daughter Maxwell, 7, and son Ace, 6 — is “an amazing father.”
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“We all want Eric’s time so he’s very good at splitting up the time between all four of us,” she explains. “My son, literally is always like, ‘Dad, dad, dad, dad, dad.‘ I’m like, ‘Eric, how are you not going crazy?’ He never gets frustrated. He is just so patient with them. And he’s always trying to find a way to make learning fun and exciting.”
“The way that he shows his love and affection is one of the sexiest things in the world,” Simpson adds. “To watch my husband as a father is a really beautiful and sexy quality.”
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And as a duo, Simpson says they are definitely more relaxed as parents today.
“With Max and Ace, I was just trying to navigate my way through understanding what it was to be a mom and how much of myself I needed to give over,” she says. “You’re constantly questioning yourself, but with my third child, I feel like I have so much more confidence as a mom.”
Simpson adds, “We know that not everything is that big of a deal. They’ll stop crying, they’re not gonna cry forever. We have a lot more patience and understanding this time around.”
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With her memoir out and her daughter turning 1, Simpson is proud to be a role model to her three children — especially when it comes to giving back.
“It’s a really powerful thing, especially with my older kids, to be able to be involved with something like this and to be a role model for them,” Simpson says of teaming up with cookie brand Keebler and Make-A-Wish Foundation. “The collaboration has been a natural thing for me to want to be involved with. Honestly, like the magic that it brings to children is unbelievable.”
Between March 2 and April 30, a portion of specially-marked Keebler cookie packs will be donated to the Make-A-Wish Foundation, an organization near and dear to Simpson’s heart.
“There was a 15-year-old boy who didn’t know if he was ever going to get to propose to anybody. He was this little romantic kid that wanted to propose to me,” Simpson says of working with the charity before. “He brought a ring, got down on his knee and he asked me to marry him and I said yes. And we had an amazing date. It was a beautiful and powerful thing.”
The star adds, “To know that these children who are sick, their dreams can come true with you buying cookies. That’s two rewards right there.”
