Fool me once, shame on me, but fool me twice...
Kelly Ripa recently recalled learning the hard way that she husband Mark Consuelos need to lock the door when having some alone time. After all, their daughter Lola has walked in on them having sex—not just once, but twice. And to make matters more awkward, it turns out both instances have occurred on their daughter's birthday.
The first occasion happened on Lola's eighth birthday while the family was vacationing in Italy, the 52-year-old recalled on the August 2 episode of her podcast Let's Talk Off Camera. She said that the couple had not "had a lot of alone time" on the trip, and after the kids had gone to bed, she felt it to be "now or never."
"I encouraged him to lock [the] door, and he tells me he did," Kelly explained, per People. "All I know is, at a certain point, I made eye contact with my 8-year-old daughter who is standing at the foot of the bed."
Then exactly eight years later, déjà vu. "The same thing happened eight years later on her 16th birthday," she continued. "Same exact thing. She threw the door open."
And it turns out teenage Lola had no problem expressing exactly how she felt about the situation.
"'Oh my god, life is over,'" Kelly recalled her then 16-year-old saying at the time. "'I used to see in color and now everything is gray. How could you do this to me? What is wrong with you people?'"
So what does the Live! with Kelly and Mark host have to say about the encounters?
"The moral of the story is that she never learned to knock," Kelly joked. "Hopefully, by the time she turns 24, we'll be done having sex."
But with her children returning home—Kelly and Mark are also parents to Michael, 26, and Joaquin, 18—Kelly has learned to take further precautions than simply reminding her kids to knock.
"Mark and I had gotten into our habits of just sort of wandering around as we please, you know, leaving the doors open as we please," she revealed to Justin Sylvester in the June 14 episode of E! News. "And then, lo and behold, Lola comes back from London and now we've gotta lock it up again. Joaquin came home for his summer break, and we had to lock it up again."
But it seems like the extra precautions are working, because Lola is currently happily living at home with her parents after graduating from New York University this year.
"I actually adore it so much because I am always wanting to be a child again," the now 22-year-old told E! News in July of moving back home. "So being in my childhood home makes me feel exactly like that."
And despite a return to household chores like doing her dishes and making her bed before leaving the house, Lola said she's grateful for the continued example her parents give her on how to stay "authentic and grounded."
"I am really grateful to have them as built-in mentors," she added, joking, "I don't even have to pay for them. They've just been there."