WNBA star Candace Parker announced Tuesday that she and her partner Anya Petrakova are expecting a baby. The exciting news accompanied the revelation that Parker and Petrakova, who is pregnant, are married.
“Happy Anniversary Моя жена! 2 years ago, I got to marry my best friend in front of our close family and friends. My heart could have exploded. I cried like a baby…. To know me or you is to know our love. This journey hasn’t been easy. I am proud of us and what we have built and who we have grown to become both individually and together,” Parker captioned an Instagram post of photos from their wedding.
“Thank you for always loving Lailaa as your own, being my calm, my support, my voice of reason, my laughs, my cuddles, my dance in the rain, my happy, my home… Thanks for constantly challenging me and telling me when I’m wrong ?. I LOVE YOU? I appreciate you, I value you and what we have,” she continued.
The bun in the oven will be Parker’s second child. She welcomed daughter Lailaa in 2009 with ex-husband Shelden Williams.
“We’ve always dreamed of growing our family….it’s surreal that we now have a baby on the way! Lailaa is pumped to be a big sister,” she wrote in her IG post on Tuesday. “You couldn’t be more beautiful! Glowing, while understanding that I have to constantly love, kiss, and talk to your belly AND yes… play Jay-Z for the baby (Goose knows “Song Cry” already by heart? !) I can’t wait to embark on this next chapter in life with you!”
In October, the Chicago Sky captain helped lead the team to its first WNBA title. Speaking to reporters after a post-Finals press conference that month, Parker opened up about motherhood and raising her 12-year-old daughter. Lailaa was seven when Parker won her first WNBA championship.
“I owe everything I am to her, just because she’s been my motivation and my reason for everything,” Parker said in a press conference after the Game 4 match with the Phoenix Mercury on Oct. 17., Popsugar reported.
“We’ve gone through this together, you know? She sacrifices her mom so that I can live my dream. I just am so thankful for her, that she’s here for the big moments, but she’s also here when I don’t want to get up and go work out, she sees those moments,” she said. “So I just am so over the moon at how amazing she’s grown up to be, and I know I’m partial, but she’s an amazing young lady.”
Over the summer, Parker joined an exclusive group of woman athletes to adorn cover art of sports games, The Associated Press reported. She made history when became the first female basketball player on the NBA 2K22 cover for the WNBA 25th Anniversary special edition that was released Sept. 10.
“I grew up a video game fanatic, that’s what I did, to the point where my brothers would give me the fake controller when I was younger where I think I was playing and I wasn’t,” Parker said. “All I wanted to do was just be like them. As a kid growing up, you dream of having your own shoe and dream of being in a video game. Those are an athlete as a kid’s dreams. To be able to experience that, I don’t take it lightly.”
Parker said when she was just starting in the WNBA in 2008, she didn’t appreciate it as much as she does now.
“I think when you’re young and experience these type of things, you’re onto the next thing,” she said. “As I’ve gotten older, I’ve really savored the moment.”
This article contains additional reporting from The Associated Press.
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