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Why Anderson Cooper was mad at his ex when their son took his first steps

The CNN anchor and Benjamin Maisani welcomed their first child with the help of surrogate in 2020.

Anderson Cooper’s parenting partner, Benjamin Maisani, missed the memo about their 13-month-old son Wyatt’s developmental milestones.

“I was doing an interview and I get this text from Wyatt’s other dad, Benjamin, and he said, ‘He just walked… exclamation mark, exclamation mark,” Cooper, 54, revealed on Wednesday’s episode of “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert.” “My reaction was fury. I was like, ‘I can’t believe I missed this.’ I got really pissed at Benjamin. In my household when I grew up, you would lie about everything. He should have just lied.”

2018 Windward School Benefit Honoring Anderson Cooper, Christine and Stephen A. Schwarzman, Sally Shaywitz and Bennett Shaywitz
Anderson Cooper and Benjamin Maisani posed for a photo in 2018. Al Pereira / Getty Images

Wyatt, who “walks like a drunken sailor,” is also babbling up a storm.

“He talks in a dialect of Hindu or Urdu, I’m not sure,” Cooper joked. “It’s incredible. It’s a really interesting dialect. He doesn’t make any sense at this point, but he’s really committed to it.”

The journalist also opened up about Father’s Day and how he “avoided” the holiday after losing his dad, Wyatt Cooper, when he was 10.

“I just did not acknowledge it. Father’s Day when you don’t have a dad, it’s not even bittersweet. It’s inexplicable. The pain was so great for my most of my life,” he revealed. “And yet, the interesting thing for me about having son, a child, is it has made me connect with my dad… in a way that I’d never really anticipated. I remember things about my dad that I never remembered before because I’m experiencing them with Wyatt.”

Cooper, who will be spending Father’s Day in Connecticut with Maisani and Wyatt, said “every cliche” came true when he became a parent.

“It changes the way you think about the world and it makes you feel more deeply,” he gushed. “I did not know that my heart could grow new chambers and new ventricles.”

Last year, Cooper explained that he's parenting with Maisani because he grew up in a single-parent household and wants Wyatt to have a different experience.

"I don't really have a family and so my friends become my family. This is somebody I was involved with for 10 years," he said during an appearance on SirusXM's "The Howard Stern Show."

He added: "I thought if something ever happens to me, or even if something doesn't happen to me, if more people love my son and are in his life, I'm all for that. My ex is a great guy and I think it's good to have two parents, if you can."