This morning we showed you Britney's hot new Rolling Stone cover [1], and now we've got another inside peek at her interview and photo shoot. The photos show a perfect balance of sexy and flirty, and it's refreshing to see Britney smiling and laughing again. Here are more highlights from the article where the pop star talks about her boys, her ex, and her music: [2]

[3]

• On Kevin Federline: "I didn't think my husband was gonna leave me. Otherwise, I'd be with my babies 24/7. But since they're almost like twins, they both take care of each other. I think they look like me. They don't look like their father at all."
• On the boys: "Every time they come to visit me, I think about how they're such special people . . . Like, they're going to preschool now! I went there to pick them up on Friday, and seeing them in their little classroom and seeing Jayden being bad or not listening? It's like, those are mine, and it's just crazy, you know what I mean? And the things that are coming out of their mouths right now — they're learning so much, and it's new, and you never know what they're going to say, and they're so smart yet so innocent. They're obsessed with monsters, and every night we look outside, and we have to show them that there's no monsters out there. It's dark outside, but there's nothin' out there, you know."
• On using personal experiences in her music: "It's scary to put yourself out there and be like, 'Oh, God, is that cool?' If you're not going to really go for it, you can't just go there halfway. But sometimes, when you go for it, you can't lose."
• On choosing tracks for the album: "You just hear it, and you're like, oh, my God, if somebody else takes this song, you're gonna kill yourself, you know what I mean? Like, this one I'm doing tonight, I think it's good, and it's, like, really quirky and different and girly."

It sounds like Britney is growing up and coming into her own in both her career and personal life as a mother, but without losing the sweet Southern girl she always was on the inside.

To see an interview with the writer of the article on what it was like to interview Britney this time, just .