Hilary Duff Is Every Mom Trying to Keep Her Baby Daughter Out of the Dog Water Bowl

You win some, you lose some — never does that feel truer than when you’re a parent. And a new video of Hilary Duff’s daughter playing in a dog’s water bowl serves as an excellent reminder that celebrity moms have to pick their parenting battles just like the rest of us. Apparently, trying to keep 7-month-old Banks out of the family dog’s floor dishes is a war waged daily in the home Duff shares with her fiancé (and Banks’s daddy) Matthew Koma.

In a deeply relatable moment, Duff first let fans in on Banks’s not-so-secret obsession in an Instagram story video shared on Wednesday, June 19. “Where are you going?” Duff asks her little busybody baby before lamenting, “Not to the water bowl. No!” Naturally, Banks makes a beeline to the water bowl despite her mama’s protests. Duff went on to share two more Instagram story videos of baby Banks splashing in the water bowl, during which Duff can be heard in the background laughing as she says, “Oh, my gosh.”

Duff captioned the final video of the water-loving toddler with a seemingly universal parenting truth: “2^nd babies love germs.” With your first kid, you’re paranoid about everything. With your second kid, you loosen the reins and let that little germ-magnet build their immunity.

Duff is obviously taking it all in stride. In between videos of Banks splashing in the dog’s water bowl, she shared a video of her daughter plunging a dirty hand into Duff’s cup of green juice. Hey, what are you gonna do, right? Babies gonna baby. And, really, when they’re this little and sweet, even taking baths in the dog food bowl seems super-cute.

Since welcoming Banks in October 2018, Duff and Koma have been sharing their journey on social media, often posting videos and photos of Banks’s milestones. Duff’s 7-year-old son Luca, from her previous marriage to hockey player Mike Comrie, makes routine cameos in footage of his baby sister too. In a video posted May 22 to commemorate Banks’s first time fully crawling, Luca can be seen cheering for her as she makes her way across the nursery.

They’ve come along way since welcoming Banks (or “Banksy,” as the family affectionately refers to her) at home in a water birth. Duff recounted the experience on Dr. Elliot Berlin’s Informed Pregnancy podcast in November, revealing that the labor took much longer than the actual delivery — she was in labor “for a really long time” before it was time to start pushing but  once she did, it only took “like, five pushes.”

Shortly after the birth, Duff shared the family’s joy on Instagram, writing of Banks, “This little bit has fully stolen our hearts! She joined our world at home on Thursday afternoon and is absolute magic.”