Eva Mendes has mixed feelings about the month of April, but said her “biggest blessing” was her and Ryan Gosling’s daughter, Amada, being born on April 29, 2016.
“Oh April,” the actress, 50, wrote via Instagram on Monday, April 1, alongside two snaps of herself outdoors. “I have such a complicated relationship with you. Tomorrow would have been my brother’s birthday…..in a couple of weeks from now is the day we lost him,” she continued. (Mendes’ older brother, Carlos Mendez, died of cancer on April 17, 2016 at 53.)
Mendes concluded the post with, “but then, the end of April we got the biggest blessing of all, my little girl was born 8 years ago. I hate you April. But I love you more. 💕”
Fans rushed to the comments section to express their sentiments with the Fast Five star.
“I feel the same way for July. Lost my dad in July and my mama and son is born in July💔❤️❤️” one user wrote.
Another user added, “your April is my November.”
“Same,” a third user commented. “My brother was born & died in April. April & I have a complicated love-hate relationship.”
Along with Amada, Mendes and her longtime partner Gosling, 43, also share daughter Esmeralda, 9.
Although they have been relatively quiet about their private life, Mendes and Gosling have opened up about parenting from time to time.
“Some good parenting advice I heard and live by,” Mendes captioned a March 2023 Instagram video, explaining her goal as a mom. “[I] want my kids — when they get into trouble later on in life — I want them to be like, ‘I gotta call my mom,’ versus, ‘Ooh, I can’t tell my mom about this,'” the actress said in the clip, noting that she wants her children to be able to “come to [her] with anything.”
She continued: “I’m always trying to connect to them. Especially during the hardest times when I don’t want to and I’d rather be mad.”
During a July 2022 appearance on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon, Gosling revealed that Amada is never shy to express her opinions. “My youngest has a real power move,” he explained, recalling a family visit to the The Louvre in Paris. “We were standing in front of the Mona Lisa and she goes, ‘This museum?'” Gosling then mimicked his daughter’s next move, which was a thumbs down.
“I said, ‘Why?'” he continued. “She went, ‘Because it is not good.'” He added that she occasionally flashes her thumbs down behind her back before leaving a room. “The ‘Thumbs Down Walk-Away,'” he quipped. “It’s like, Roman Emperor level.”
During an interview on the Today show in late March, Mendes said “it was like a no-brainer” to become a stay at home mom.
“I’m so lucky, and I was like, if I could have this time with my children — and I still work, I just didn’t act, because acting takes you on location,” she said. “It takes you away. It was almost just like a non-verbal agreement that it was like, ‘OK, he’s [Gosling] going to work and I’m going to work. I’m just going to work here.’”
