Katherine Schwarzenegger and Chris Pratt are adjusting to being parents to two daughters splendidly. The couple, who got married in June 2019, gave birth to their oldest daughter, Lyla Maria Schwarzenegger Pratt, in August 2020, and their younger daughter, Eloise Christina Schwarzenegger Pratt, followed in May 2022. In a February 2023 interview with Entertainment Tonight, Schwarzenegger got honest about the highs and lows of parenting alongside Chris, whom she calls an “incredible dad.”
“We are hardcore adulting here!” she said about their lives as parents. “It’s been a very blessed time. I feel very lucky.” Schwarzenegger says the most significant change is probably how little sleep she gets. “To me, the biggest adjustment has been just the sleep factor. I feel like everybody always tells me that the jump from one to two children is the biggest,” she said. “I don’t know if it’s because I’m the oldest in my family that I didn’t really feel like there was more commotion going on or more activity, ’cause I’m used to that, but definitely in the middle of the night when they both wake up, is when I’m just kind of like, ‘OK, this can be a lot.'” Luckily, she has Chris there to help her, adding, “It’s so sweet to watch! He’s an incredible dad… it’s very special.”
Schwarzenegger and Chris’s daughters have an older brother in 10-year-old Jack Pratt, Chris’s son with his ex-wife Anna Faris, but it’s Lyla and Eloise’s sisterhood that serves as the subject matter for Schwarzenegger’s new book, “Good Night, Sister,” which hits shelves on Feb. 7 and is all about the special bond between sisters. Watching their daughters’ growing love for one another has been one of parenting’s biggest bright spots for Schwarzenegger. “She is just so excited about her all the time, wants to be with her, wants to squeeze her, wants to hug her, help her,” she explained about how Lyla has taken to being a big sister to Eloise. “Just the two of them are just so sweet together.”
Schwarzenegger’s relationship with her younger sister, Christina Schwarzenegger, also inspired her book. “It’s really special to be coming out with something that talks about the importance of sisterhood and just the importance of that relationship, because it was such an amazing one growing up, and to be able to read so many of the same books and do so many of the same things that I did with my sister . . . To watch my girls do the same is so special.”
Apart from Chris and her sister Christina, Katherine also has her extended family – dad Arnold Schwarzenegger, mom Maria Shriver, and her brothers Patrick and Christopher Schwarzenegger – helping out in the child-rearing department. “I’m so lucky with my whole family and how they’ve all stepped into these roles as aunts and uncles, and, you know, my parents are grandparents,” she explained. “My mom and my dad are both amazing grandparents to my girls, and to see them all here now is so special. . . They just really love the grandparent role, especially [how] you can hype them up on sugar and send them home.”
The Schwarzeneggers are clearly putting the village in “it takes a village to raise a child.” Katherine’s “Good Night, Sister” is available now everywhere books are sold.