Other moms can relate! Ellie Kemper will never forget the first plane ride her son, James, took – because it was just that awful.
“[It] was the very worst. It was from New York to Los Angeles. It was Christmas time, he was five months old and he cried the whole time,” the Office alum, 38, exclusively recalled to Us Weekly. “You don’t know what to do. You’re apologizing to other passengers and of course he feel asleep as soon as we landed but what can you do? You’re trapped and you think, this will never end but it does end.”
“I had to summon my inner Kimmy, ‘Ten seconds at a time. This is going to end,’” she jokingly added, referring to her carefree Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt character. “But it’s excruciating.”
Kemper welcomed James with her husband, Michael Koman, in summer 2016. The couple will celebrate his 2nd birthday next month.
“It is incredible how quickly everything changes and I was not prepared for that. We were just in Los Angeles for another panel and I thought, ‘Oh I’m going to have a nice escape,’ and it’s like the whole time you really are racing to get back,” Kemper told Us at the Netflix show’s For Your Consideration event in NYC on Sunday, June 3. “My friends with older kids say, ‘No, no later you will welcome the vacation,’ but right now I just want to get home.”
As for what her son’s latest milestones are? “I’m sure it’s very standard development but to me he’s a genius. I can’t believe how he’s mastered all of these words already. In the past week he’s started imitating, mimicking words that I say. He says them right back to me and I think he’s the smartest person on the planet,” she gushed. “He’s running around all the time. He loves water and sprinklers.”
Luckily, the terrible twos haven’t begun, but the star says James is right “on the cusp” of it. “Today there was a brutal trip home in the stroller from the playground. It was just screaming and screaming and then you get worried that people around you think you’re doing something. ‘No, I’m just pushing him, he doesn’t want to go home!’” she cracked.
