Jenny McCarthy loves raising 8½-year-old Evan and she’s learned to accept everything that goes with it.

“He’s totally in love with women,” Jenny tells People. “He’s got pictures of three girls above his bed, that are all like 16, 15 and 14, and he’s only 8.”

“At night he’s like, ‘I’m on the phone and I need my privacy,’ ” she jokes. “He’s a total ladies’ man. But I don’t know if he’s going to be the most romantic Casanova in the world…or Hugh Hefner.”

But, despite the fact that Evan’s growing up, he’s still a little boy at heart. When he’s not flirting with the ladies, he’s looking for bugs. “He’s like, ‘Let’s go kill some bugs in the backyard now and go dissect them,’" Jenny shares.

“I count my blessings every day. We’ve been through hell and back,” she says. “I was on the treadmill [recently] and burst out crying, thinking of a time when he’d had a seizure and I had to call 911. I’m still living those mommy nightmares. But he’s alive, talking and happy – and everything is OK.”

As for a recent medical journal report invalidating Dr. Andrew Wakefield’s study on the connection between vaccinations and autism, which once affected Evan, Jenny says, “People aren’t just listening to what this doctor has said, or listening to me. People are listening to their neighbors and friends. That’s why this story has stayed so powerful. How many times in the media have they tried to disprove the connection? Numerous times. But why does it keep coming up? It’s the power of the people. Many, many more parents out there are still concerned about that connection.”