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" It&amp;#039;s tough to rattle Kelly Ripa. Sure, we saw the 5&amp;#039; 3&amp;quot; blond tear up when she gave her on-air goodbye to friend and cohost Regis Philbin a mere three months ago. It was hard not to wonder how the morning show would go on without the unlikely, yet perfectly matched, couple \u2014 Ripa the bubbly and sweet yin to Philbin&amp;#039;s playfully cantankerous yang. But she didn&amp;#039;t miss a beat and was back on the air the following Monday, handling the transition with aplomb. &amp;quot;It&amp;#039;s not that different from what it&amp;#039;s been. My first year, Regis had been doing the show for 18 years, so he had quite a lot of vacation time,&amp;quot; says Ripa. &amp;quot;The sign has changed, which took me about a week to notice. And the coffee cup is new. But everything looks exactly the same \u2014 it&amp;#039;s just that his name is missing.&amp;quot; When the New Jersey native joined Live! 11 years ago, she was the new girl on the block. Now she&amp;#039;s the force carrying the show that millions tune in to watch every morning (at press time, her new permanent cohost hadn&amp;#039;t yet been announced). It seems the more responsibility you throw at Ripa, the better she is at handling it. When she isn&amp;#039;t working, Ripa is \u00FCber-mom to Michael, 14, Lola, 10, and Joaquin, 9. (Her eldest isn&amp;#039;t a fan of being mentioned on-air...or even being seen with her. On the day Ripa visited Michael&amp;#039;s school for a parent-teacher conference, he insisted she not acknowledge him if they crossed paths. Says Ripa with a shrug, &amp;quot;I kind of feel I&amp;#039;ve done my job right if they&amp;#039;re mildly embarrassed by me.&amp;quot;) And in mentioning Ripa&amp;#039;s roles, let&amp;#039;s not forget that of wife to Mark Consuelos. &amp;quot;He&amp;#039;s kind of awesome,&amp;quot; beams Ripa, thinking of her husband. &amp;quot;I think he makes me better. He makes everything in our lives better.&amp;quot; Good Housekeeping sat down with America&amp;#039;s sweetheart to dish about work, how she stays slim and energized, those precocious kids, and her hot husband. She even revealed the time she really and truly lost it in front of them \u2014 read on: GOOD HOUSEKEEPING: What do you miss the most about Regis? You two were partners for quite a while. KELLY RIPA: His funny stories. He&amp;#039;s a great storyteller. There was always something going wrong in his life, and that was always very funny. Nobody has luck that bad. GH: Let&amp;#039;s hope not! Now, let me ask you about another man in your life \u2014 your husband, Mark Consuelos. Do you two have your fights? KR: Oh, sure. We argue about children, discipline, homework, good-cop/bad-cop. He says he&amp;#039;s the bad cop and I&amp;#039;m the good cop, but really they associate him with fun and after-school activities. They associate me with inoculations, X-rays, and stitches. He&amp;#039;s more apt to dole out discipline, but my punishments are real. I&amp;#039;ll take away my son&amp;#039;s iPod if he&amp;#039;s fresh. When we&amp;#039;re traveling, Mark will say, &amp;quot;If you don&amp;#039;t stop, I&amp;#039;m going to have the pilot turn this plane around.&amp;quot; I&amp;#039;ll whisper to him, &amp;quot;They know you can&amp;#039;t do that. The airline isn&amp;#039;t going to turn this plane around because you&amp;#039;re punishing the kids. You need to come up with something real.&amp;quot; GH: That&amp;#039;s a very funny story! What are your best qualities as a wife? KR: I don&amp;#039;t give him a hard time about seeing his friends. Or for doing things independently, like taking a weekend biking trip with his racing friends. He doesn&amp;#039;t need to take me everywhere or do everything with me. I&amp;#039;m very much about us having our own separate time. And I don&amp;#039;t give him a hard time about not doing things around the house, like taking out the trash. GH: You&amp;#039;re in the best shape of your life. Let&amp;#039;s talk about your exercise routine.  KR: I work out every day. It&amp;#039;s part of my life. That&amp;#039;s one of the benefits of having kids in school full-time. I&amp;#039;m usually done with work around 11 A.M., so I have time before I pick the kids up from school. I do it more for my insides than my outside, but the outside gets a nice benefit, too. I feel like my mind is a little quieter when I exercise. And I don&amp;#039;t have the best family history heart-wise, so I really try to keep my heart strong. GH: Tell us about your actual workouts. KR: I work out with a trainer, Anna Kaiser, three days a week. We do what I would call cardio ballet and power yoga. I take spinning classes at SoulCycle, which I love, and I run. I get bored, so I like to mix it up a little bit. I try to make my heart beat out of my chest, hard-core, once a day for at least a half hour. I think that&amp;#039;s very important. GH: What about those days you just don&amp;#039;t feel motivated to work out? Do you have a secret tactic to share?  KR: If I&amp;#039;m exhausted and I just don&amp;#039;t feel like it, then I don&amp;#039;t do it. I am a human being, after all. But I also know I&amp;#039;m the kind of person who, if I take one day off, well, it&amp;#039;s very easy for me to take the next day off and then quit exercising. If I don&amp;#039;t do it every day, I won&amp;#039;t do it at all. GH: Is that where all of your energy comes from? KR: I think exercise has everything to do with it. Before I started exercising, I was exhausted all the time. I remember when Joaquin was about 7 months old, I was carrying him up the stairs, and was completely winded when I got to the top. I thought, I&amp;#039;ve got to figure this out, because I shouldn&amp;#039;t be exhausted like this. My husband encouraged me and said, &amp;quot;If you worked out, you&amp;#039;d feel so much better, and it would quiet your mind down.&amp;quot; Because I&amp;#039;m a worrier. And he was right. I started out three days a week, walking for a half hour on a treadmill; then it was five days a week, and then I started jogging. It was like a drug. The gateway drug is the treadmill.  GH: Do you take vitamins? KR: I&amp;#039;m not that disciplined with vitamins. I do take fish oil supplements and vitamin C. I try to do it nutritionally, because I hate to swallow pills. I eat a very clean diet. I always say I&amp;#039;m a vegetarian who occasionally eats sushi. GH: Do you cheat at all? Do you, say, have a sweet tooth? KR: I&amp;#039;m not militant about anything. If there&amp;#039;s cheesecake in the house, I&amp;#039;ll have some. If I&amp;#039;m in the mood for something, I&amp;#039;ll have it. I don&amp;#039;t obsess about anything. I could have three or four &amp;quot;cheat days&amp;quot; in a week and then not have dessert for another three months.  GH: You&amp;#039;ve said you only need a little bit of sleep most nights. What exactly are your sleep habits like \u2014 when do you go to bed, and when do you get up? KR: I typically go to bed at 1:00 A.M. Then I wake up around 3:30 for some reason. I get up and check on the kids. Mark will say, &amp;quot;Why are you awake?&amp;quot; I&amp;#039;m not sure. I&amp;#039;ll check my e-mail. I have a friend who&amp;#039;s an insomniac, so there&amp;#039;s usually an e-mail from her that I&amp;#039;ll respond to. Once I do that, I&amp;#039;m in trouble, because she could respond, and then we&amp;#039;re communicating in the middle of the night. I turn on the TV and try to find an infomercial that is very repetitive to put me to sleep. Then I usually get up around 6:00 A.M. and get the kids ready for school and get them fed. Five hours of sleep a night is where I am.  GH: Do you take naps, or are you one of those people who catch up on sleep on the weekends? KR: It&amp;#039;s funny, I started taking a spin class on the weekends at 6:30 in the morning, but Mark put his foot down because when I get up, he gets up, too. So he told me, &amp;quot;You have to sleep in. You can take a spin class in the afternoon. The kids are fine. You don&amp;#039;t have to make them lunch. I&amp;#039;ll get lunch. Don&amp;#039;t worry about it.&amp;quot; GH: So how do you and Mark ever find time alone together? KR: After the kids go to bed, we have a couple of hours when it&amp;#039;s just us. We either talk about the day or watch one of our favorite TV shows. Otherwise, there&amp;#039;d be no time. We used to go away, just the two of us, for three days to celebrate our anniversary every year. I can&amp;#039;t remember the last time we did that. It just became too much to climb out from under the amount of homework that would pile up! Maybe when the kids are a little bit older, we&amp;#039;ll start again. We started having kids young, so when they leave the house, we&amp;#039;ll still be young enough to enjoy it. Of course, thinking about that makes me panic. I can&amp;#039;t even let myself go there. GH: Do you ever think about having another baby?  KR: That&amp;#039;s the one constant discussion in our house. The kids are always asking, &amp;quot;When are you going to have another baby?&amp;quot; I don&amp;#039;t want to gild the lily. We&amp;#039;ve been so lucky. Our children are healthy and happy. My job is ideal for raising children, but now I have three kids with after-school activities and homework. When I think about how our three got here \u2014 we didn&amp;#039;t actually think about it, we just did it. But now we&amp;#039;re grown-ups, and I think about a lot of things, not just How will I get to a soccer game outside in February with a baby? I&amp;#039;m 41, and they start giving you the &amp;quot;advanced maternal age&amp;quot; warning at 35, so it scares me. I think about adopting. There are so many children who need homes. Then again, I think about the best-case scenario \u2014 not just for us, but for my children. I want to make sure my preteen daughter isn&amp;#039;t raising a newborn because I&amp;#039;ve got to take Michael to a track meet. Of course, there are babysitters, but I would want to devote the same amount of time to a new addition to the family that we were able to devote to these three. GH: With a 14-year-old, a 10-year-old, and a 9-year-old child, there&amp;#039;s got to be a lot of homework being done in your house. How involved are you with that?  KR: With our 14-year-old, we&amp;#039;re not involved anymore because he&amp;#039;s outclassed us. We can no longer help him. Our son&amp;#039;s schoolwork looks crazy to us. I feel terrible for him, because he should have parents who can help him. I look at him and have to say, &amp;quot;I&amp;#039;m sorry, I&amp;#039;m a talk show host; I just don&amp;#039;t know how to do that.&amp;quot; Joaquin, who&amp;#039;s in third grade, is the only one we can still help homework-wise with a level of assuredness. The kids know they&amp;#039;re smarter than we are at this point, but they still have to maintain their grades or else they&amp;#039;ll be punished. Mark and I still make sure we maintain that level of control. GH: And how exactly do you punish the kids if they don&amp;#039;t keep their grades up? KR: We don&amp;#039;t let them watch TV during the week anyway, but [if we need to punish them] we&amp;#039;ll take that away on the weekends. We have a computer in the kitchen, the common area, and it&amp;#039;s usually used for homework, but on the weekends they can FaceTime       with their friends. We&amp;#039;ll take that away \u2014 which is like taking oxygen out of my daughter&amp;#039;s lungs. The fact that she doesn&amp;#039;t have a cell phone has ruined her life. She&amp;#039;ll be 11 in June, and according to her, she&amp;#039;s the only one of her friends who doesn&amp;#039;t have a cell phone yet. But I don&amp;#039;t believe that! GH: What are the key differences between raising boys and raising girls? KR: For one thing, parent-teacher conferences are night-and-day experiences. We sometimes say Lola&amp;#039;s parent-teacher conferences are what get us through the boys&amp;#039;. However, at home our boys are no work \u2014 they play nicely together, they&amp;#039;re peaceful, they never fight. Whereas the school describes our daughter, and I&amp;#039;m in shock: They say she&amp;#039;s an angel, the peacemaker. I&amp;#039;m thinking, You&amp;#039;ve got to be kidding me. I once watched her walk up and kick her brother in front of me, then turn around and say she hadn&amp;#039;t done it, with such conviction. Those are the differences. And for whatever reason, she smells better.   GH: If you could, what advice would you give your younger self? KR: Appreciate every second, even when you&amp;#039;re exhausted. I remember when Michael was 14 weeks old and I was thinking, I can&amp;#039;t wait until he&amp;#039;s 14 so I can sleep through the night. You don&amp;#039;t sleep through the night when they&amp;#039;re 14. You stay awake for other reasons. The worries become so much more significant and bigger \u2014 you just want them to feel good about themselves, you want them to do well in school, you don&amp;#039;t want them to be influenced by any bad peer groups. When they&amp;#039;re 14 weeks old, you can cradle them. Now it&amp;#039;s [him saying], &amp;quot;Please don&amp;#039;t acknowledge me at the track meet. Don&amp;#039;t cheer me on.&amp;quot; GH: Are you the type of parent who embarrasses him anyway, or do you honor his request? KR: No, I respect [his wishes]. Well, OK, the only reason I&amp;#039;m telling you this is that he doesn&amp;#039;t read this magazine. This year he said, &amp;quot;I&amp;#039;m the only kid at school who gets dropped off and whose mother picks him up. I don&amp;#039;t want that anymore.&amp;quot; I said, &amp;quot;Fine.&amp;quot; Now, when the bus comes, I wait on the opposite corner, across the street, and I watch him walk home with his friends. He doesn&amp;#039;t know I&amp;#039;m there. He&amp;#039;s never seen me. I&amp;#039;m literally like a cat burglar following him home. In my opinion, when you take your eyes off them, sometimes they can get in a lot of trouble. He&amp;#039;s a very sweet kid, but I still hold on to that little ounce of keeping an eye on him. I do it my way, so he doesn&amp;#039;t have to know. He still has his freedom, but it&amp;#039;s a monitored freedom. I&amp;#039;m sure there will be a parenting expert reading this and saying I&amp;#039;m doing it wrong. I read that book How to Hug a Porcupine [by Julie Ross] \u2014 it&amp;#039;s my parenting bible. They say you have to trust your children and give them freedom. I say, OK, but this is New York City! GH: Do you ever just lose it with your kids? KR: Yes. Not too long ago I came home late, I hadn&amp;#039;t eaten dinner, and a babysitter was there. She said, &amp;quot;They were great; they were absolute angels,&amp;quot; and she left. Then a riot broke out \u2014 they got out of bed; Lola and Joaquin were hitting each other and screaming. I was separating them, and then Lola wanted me to read her a story. I said, &amp;quot;No, I have to eat dinner, and you need to go to bed.&amp;quot; Then Joaquin said, &amp;quot;If you read her a story, you have to read me a story!&amp;quot; And Michael&amp;#039;s like, &amp;quot;Mom, can I order a movie on iTunes?&amp;quot; I just broke down crying in front of them, which I had never done before. They reacted in a way that was so peculiar. The two boys retreated to their rooms and shut their doors. My daughter was like, &amp;quot;Oh, Mom, do you want me to rub your head?&amp;quot; I was like, &amp;quot;No, I want you to go to bed. I need to eat dinner.&amp;quot; That&amp;#039;s the only time I&amp;#039;ve really lost it in front of them. GH: How do you keep yourself together and not lose it more often? KR: I deep-breathe, and I do a lot of yoga. There&amp;#039;s no real manual on being a parent. There&amp;#039;s no real manual on being a wife. I keep reminding myself, My mother did all this, only she never got to leave the house. OK, I can do this. We&amp;#039;re all learning on our own learning curve. I remember when Mark and I got married, my parents bought us this enormous television with a projector screen that was all the rage, and it came with this [massive] instruction manual. When we had Michael, [the hospital staff] were like, &amp;quot;OK, here&amp;#039;s your newborn baby and a leaflet.&amp;quot; I was like, I can&amp;#039;t believe they&amp;#039;re letting us walk out of here with this. It&amp;#039;s up to us to learn as we go and to do the best we can. I always remind my kids, &amp;quot;I&amp;#039;m your parent, but I&amp;#039;m a human being, too, so I may not be perfect.&amp;quot; GH: We can all relate to that. Do you have any imperfections as a wife? KR: I think he would say that I talk too much \u2014 endlessly. If the two of us go out to dinner, I feel the need to talk. He thinks we can sit and enjoy the ambience of the room \u2014 just have a cocktail and bask in each other&amp;#039;s glow. I feel the need to hash things out: &amp;quot;Can you believe what our kids did today? I feel like you&amp;#039;re not listening to me. Are you listening to me?&amp;quot; I&amp;#039;m entirely too verbal with him. GH: Do you have any family rituals? KR: We go to church on Sunday. Mark and I were such lax Catholics until we had children. Then you realize you want your kids to grow up the same way you did. [Religion is] a stabilizer in a young life. It gives you a foundation. Believe me, there are days when the last thing we want to do is get out of bed \u2014 it&amp;#039;s cold, it&amp;#039;s snowing, the kids don&amp;#039;t want to get dressed. You&amp;#039;re like, Let&amp;#039;s just stay home. But at the end of the day, we&amp;#039;ve been so fortunate that the least we can do is go and say thank you and be reflective for an hour.  Here, Kelly answers questions from our Facebook fans  Q: What are some nice things you do for your husband? KR: I make his coffee every day. I cook him breakfast in bed every weekend: scrambled eggs with cheese, bacon, wheat toast, and coffee with cream. That&amp;#039;s what he wants. And I serve it to him on a tray. Q: Give us a sample of your daily menu. KR: Breakfast is usually a piece of grainy toast. I have a piece of toast and coffee with Mark in the morning. After work, I&amp;#039;ll have a protein bar and some flaxseed snacks. And then for lunch, I&amp;#039;ll have either salad or yogurt and blueberries. For a snack, I always have Pepperidge Farm Goldfish. I cannot give them up. At dinner, I eat a ton of vegetables \u2014 and a salad, soup, or a light piece of fish. I try not to have too much cheese or too many high-fat foods, even though I love them. I would love nothing more than to have pizza and french fries every day, but I try to limit those treats to once a week. Q: What charities do you support, and why? KR: I&amp;#039;ve devoted the past 10 years of my life to the Ovarian Cancer Research Fund (ocrf.org) because I had a friend who passed away from ovarian cancer many years ago. It&amp;#039;s such a silent killer of women our age. It&amp;#039;s treatable when you know you have it, but it&amp;#039;s hard to detect, so most women who have it don&amp;#039;t know it. Q: How much time do you get to spend with your husband and your kids, given your schedule? And do you and your husband share the household duties, or do you have help? KR: I&amp;#039;m like a regular full-time mom; I just happen to work for a couple of hours while the kids are at school. I take them to all their activities. Mark is usually the later one home from work, around 6:00 P.M. We definitely share in the household chores. I do have a cleaning lady who comes and helps me, because I can&amp;#039;t be married to somebody who&amp;#039;s as OCD-neat-freakish and germaphobic as Mark Conseulos and do it myself. I need a person in there with a hazmat suit to spray bleach all over the place.  KELLY SHARES 11 SECRETS: What songs are on your iPod workout mix? Anything by Madonna, LMFAO, the Black Eyed Peas. What are your guilty pleasures?  All of the Real Housewives shows (but I really don&amp;#039;t feel guilty about it). What are five things you always have in your refrigerator? Greek yogurt, blueberries, broccoli, spinach, white wine. Five things you always have in your purse?  Rosebud Salve lip balm, credit card, cell phone, gum, hand sanitizer. What&amp;#039;s the one movie that, whenever it&amp;#039;s on, you just have to watch?  Mommie Dearest. Your most embarrassing moment?  I once left a fitting room without a shirt on without realizing it. The last time you laughed so hard you cried?  Watching Anderson Cooper&amp;#039;s RidicuList featuring G\u00E9rard Depardieu. Your most mom-brained moment?  Taking my kids to the Bronx Zoo. I put my purse on the hood of my car and drove off; didn&amp;#039;t realize it until I went to pay to get in. Who was your first celebrity crush?  Prince. I think his were the first posters on my wall. The top people you follow on Twitter?  @MarkConsuelos, @BravoAndy (Bravo&amp;#039;s Andy Cohen). Your biggest fear? Snakesssss! "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.goodhousekeeping.com/life/inspirational-stories/interviews/a18324/kelly-ripa-at-home/>