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and when I looked back I saw that he was standing face-out in the window display, staring at the crowd of photographers. They were all going crazy, taking picture after picture of him, and he was totally mesmerized by the flashes of light. I couldn‘t resist pulling out my own (much smaller) camera to take a picture. In it you see Liam from the back and (I have to admit) a rather pretty meteor shower of flashes in the window behind him.
    Cameras have surrounded Liam since the day he was born.
    They‘re both mundane and fascinating to him the way lamps or doorknobs are mundane and fascinating to other babies. When we moved into our first house, a tech company came to install top-of-the-line baby monitors that let you watch the baby on video online. Why such fancy monitors? Well, because we got them for free on condition that we let the company film the installation. Such is the world of celebrity perks: it‘s not all handbags and high heels. So the tech company had their film crew in the house, with cameras and lights. When Liam saw them he got so excited you‘d think it was Christmas morning. At first I thought, Oh look at my son, the budding filmmaker. He’s excited because he thinks they’re lining up a great shot . Then I realized that he thought the cameramen were our cameramen.
    We‘d been on hiatus for a month, and he thought the crew for our show had returned. You could see it on his face. He was thinking, They’re back! Everyone’s here! Finally, my family’s all together again!
    Okay, so that‘s a little weird. My kid expects to be surrounded by cameras. But (thanks to another celebrity perk) he also is accustomed to remote control toilets. And if my husband worked for a dry cleaner maybe Liam would expect his T-shirts to be lightly starched. Or if I were I hairdresser he‘d request a trim every other day. Lots of people have jobs that affect their children in one way or another. As far as these things go, I don‘t think we‘re inflicting major trauma. Thanks to the reality show he‘s very socialized. He‘s not scared of people. Or large cameras. Or electronics. Or sudden flashes of light. Take this kid into an alien spaceship and he‘ll feel right at home.
     
    I don‘t worry about the cameras per se. The part of leading a public life that I worry about the most is something I can‘t really change and that‘s this: people know who Liam is. People on the street in our neighborhood. People who see us when we travel.
    People we run into on vacation. Liam will grow up being recognized, and as his parent I have to think about how it affects him.
    This hit me recently when Dean and I went on a tour of a preschool for Liam. We were in a classroom watching five cute little kids in a yoga class. (Pause for laughter. So Los Angeles.
    We‘re all hippie health nuts. Okay, resume playing.) As those kids worked on their downward-facing dog poses, I looked around the classroom and noticed little cubbyholes with names on them. The name ―Deacon jumped out at me. How did I know that name? Then I realized, Oh, that’s the name of Reese Witherspoon’s son. Deacon. Looking back at the kids, I saw that, indeed, one of them was Deacon Phillippe. I recognized him. How weird is that—to be able to identify a four-year-old?
    He‘s not a celebrity, and I don‘t have any personal relationship with him or his parents beyond occasionally being on the same page of magazine photos showing that we celebrities are just like you, but I recognized him in his preschool yoga class. I thought, This is going to be Liam’s life. He‘ll forever be recognized because of who his parents are. It could have been worse. We could have named him Blanket. (Just kidding.
    Blanket—it‘s a lovely name.)
    The truth is that Liam‘s life is already like that. We were walking into a department store and a mom looked at him and asked, ―Was he in my son‘s class? Then ―Is he a catalogue baby like my daughter? Then she recognized me,