HGTV’s Fixer Upper Joanna and Chip Gaines are viewed by fans as the perfect couple, the perfect family, and the perfect parents. Are Joanna and Chip Gaines as perfect as fans perceive them to be? Joanna opens up about how she and her husband are not as perfect as the world perceives them to be.
During an interview with People , Joanna Gaines opens up about her husband Chip accidentally leaving their young son home alone.
As HGTV Fixer Upper fans know, Joanna and her husband Chip Gaines are the proud parents of four children. While they are fairly experienced in all things parenting, there was a time when they made rookie mistakes that are fairly common for first-time parents.
Joanna told People about how she had left their son Drake (who is now 11-years-old) with Chip for half an hour so she could go on a run. He was just six weeks old at the time. Joanna claims that when she returned she walked in to find Chip had prepared her an incredible breakfast.
“I walked in and discovered Chip had prepared an elaborate breakfast for me. I sat down to eat, and I looked over at Drake. He was sound asleep in his swing, still wearing nothing but his diaper.”
Joanna remembers asking her husband if he put clothes on Drake before taking him to the store. She said Chip gave her a funny look and said, “What?” She remembered returning a funny look back at him.
“Oh my gosh,” Chip said. “I totally forgot Drake was here. He was so quiet.”
Joanna claimed to have yelled at Chip and completely freaked out because this was her first time being a mother. She knew it was easy for her husband to get sidetracked, but this was their child he had forgotten about.
Fortunately for Chip, Joanna had an incredible amount of patience for her husband and understood he would need to get used to having a new baby around. This Fixer Upper mom reveals the previous incident was not the only time Chip accidentally left Drake home alone.
“Several days later, I decided to go on a good long jog, trusting that Chip would not leave Drake again,” Joanna says. “As I was on my way back, I saw Chip coming down the road. He rolled up to me with his window down and said, ‘Baby, you’re doing so good. I’m heading to work now. I’ve got to go.’
She said she thought to herself that of course her husband has Drake, but she didn’t see a car seat in the back of the truck. So, she decided to ask her husband where Drake was just to make sure. When his response was “Oh, shoot!” Joanna took off like lightning back to the house. She ended up getting back to the house faster on foot than her husband Chip did in his truck.
Joanna reveals it ended up taking three different incidents to get to where the Fixer Upper couple was today. The third incident, however, didn’t involve Chip leaving baby Drake home alone. Again, Joanna had left Drake home alone with his father while going for her jog.
“I noticed his car was still parked out front. I looked around and couldn’t find them anywhere,” Joanna says. “Moments later, Chip pulled up on his four-wheeler — with Drake bungee-strapped to the handlebars in his car seat.”
Chip said that Drake was crying and his mother told him that she used to drive him around the neighborhood when he was a baby because it would make him feel better. Chip went on to say that baby Drake loved the drive and went right to sleep.
After that incident, Joanna claims she made the decision not to go on another run for the first whole year of Drake’s life. She also said she took him to the shop and anywhere else she went and it was the “best feeling in the world.”
How do you feel knowing Chip and Joanna Gains of Fixer Upper are human and make human mistakes? Do you like knowing they made rookie mistakes first time parents make? Share your thoughts in the comments below.
[Featured Image by Desiree Navarro/WireImage/Getty Images]