Hotmail
By Kat Giantis
Special to MSN Entertainment
With the Britney Spears' comeback juggernaut turning this holiday season into all Brit-mas, all the time, Kevin Federline has decided it's time to serve up some of his own PR good cheer.
In the wake of his road-to-recovery-walking ex-wife dissing him in Rolling Stone, Glamour and her responsibility-deflecting MTV documentary, the onetime baggy-pantsed background dancer-turned-full-time dad, 30, poses on the cover of People with sons Sean Preston, 3, and Jayden James, 2, and opens up about "life with Britney."
Among the topics touched on: their 2006 split, which took no one by surprise except, it seems, Kevin.
"It's hard enough to be in a marriage, and then have a kid, then kids; it changes everything," explains Federline. "For me, I'd become more concerned with my children. Not that I ignored Britney, but my kids are always most important ... I mean, we were having complications. I didn't give her an ultimatum, but I was trying to work stuff out with her, and she didn't even talk to me or anything and went behind my back and filed [for divorce]. [I was] completely blindsided."
(©People)
|
Of course, that's not the story that Spears has been telling various media outlets as she stumps for her new album, "Circus": She's repeatedly made a point of fingering Federline as the one who did the ditching.
"I didn't think my husband was gonna leave me," she pronounced to Rolling Stone of K-Fed, who was allegedly caught on camera receiving a text message from his meal-ticket missus informing him their union was kaput. "Otherwise, I'd be with my babies 24/7. But since they're almost like twins, they both take care of each other."
In her "For the Record" documentary, Brit again tosses the blame on the guy who foisted "Popozao" onto an unsuspecting world when asked about her reasons for shaving her head: "I was going through so much artificial stuff with my kids and Kevin at the time. He'd just left me and I was devastated."
She's also accused him of teaching their sons bad words and hinted that they're in need of a strong paternal influence ("In five years I would like to be married and have a father figure for my kids, someone who is a provider and can be really stable," she told Glamour. "It's hard doing it on your own").
But Federline does his best not to take the bait. Instead, he focuses on the positive parts of their doomed romance, including the first time they locked peepers across a crowded hot spot.
|
downlevel description This video requires the
Adobe® Flash® Player. Download a free version of the player.
|
"I met her at a club in Hollywood, Joseph's. Our eyes met and that was it. We just hit it off right away," he says (at the time, he was in a relationship with a then-pregnant Shar Jackson, with whom he has two kids, Kori, 6, and Kaleb, 4). "I learned real fast how much of a whirlwind the press and everything was."
He says his happiest memory of being with Britney was their 2004 knot-tying, an intimate chicken finger- and cheeseburger-filled backyard affair that saw K-Fed's groomsmen decked out in tracksuits emblazoned with the word "Pimps" and the newlyweds dancing to Journey's "Lights."
"I never thought that I would get married, but it wound up happening," he marvels. "That was a really, really, happy, exciting moment. I pretty much realized that I was giving my life to her, and I was doing it without question."
When things turned sour and Spears started running off the rails, occasionally with their ankle-biters riding along in unsecured car seats, Federline insists it was concern for the kids and not his less-than-overflowing coffers that prompted him to get full custody (he's reportedly now receiving $20,000 a month in child support).
Britney gyrates to
"Womanizer" on "Good Morning America." (©Retna
Ltd.) |
"My first question to [my lawyer] was, 'Am I ever going to be able to see my children?'" he recalls to the mag. "I told him that I would spend every last dime that I had to make sure that my children are OK. That's all that mattered. I didn't know how much power Britney had. That really scared me."
Something else that scared him: when Britney locked herself in a bathroom with Jayden in January, leading to a police standoff that ended with her being hauled out of her Beverly Hills, Calif., home on a gurney amid an army of paparazzi and news cameras. It would be the first of her two involuntary stays in the psych ward.
"That whole night is a blur. You want to talk about one of my lowest points of depression, that was probably one of them," admits Federline. "I was very, very worried for her 'cause I care about her. That's the mother of my children. Just because I'm not in love with her doesn't mean that I don't love her. I'm definitely rooting for her. There's nothing more that I want than for her to be in the best health and doing what she loves to do."
Kevin isn't just blowing smoke. Even Britney's mother Lynne said recently that he could have been a "real pill" about a lot of things, including restricting access to the tykes, but he wasn't.
Jayden watches his mom
perform on "GMA." (©Reuters) |
He even allowed Sean and Jayden to join their closely supervised mom in New York this week as she promoted "Circus" on "Good Morning America" (they were in the front row for her lip-synched performance) and rang in her 27th birthday with much fanfare (check out highlights from the celebration here).
"Oh, man, it's totally turning around," Kevin says of the current visitation arrangement, which grants Spears three visits a week, including one overnight. "It works out that [the kids] get to see her. There's structure over there, there's structure at my house. We're trying to keep the same type of schedule. It doesn't have to be completely perfect, but the foundation is there."
Not that there aren't a few hiccups every now and then.
OK! claims Jayden experienced a bit of separation anxiety while dining with his mom and grandparents (Lynne and Brit's decision-making dad, Jamie) at the Rainbow Room Tuesday night.
"Jayden kept screaming 'Daddy', it was so sad," a spy alleges to the mag. "She asked for a high chair. Jayden was throwing a tantrum so Britney picked him up and walked outside. As she did, she literally snapped her fingers at her security guards who immediately got up and followed her outside."
Spears reportedly did her best to quell her tyke's meltdown, but eventually gave him to the nanny, who "quickly" removed him from the restaurant.
From MSNBC: See an excerpt of Federline's interview with People magazine
