Michelle Duggar teaches baby Josie to love the camera. Credit: Jim Bob Duggar
Michelle Duggar recently returned to her Tontitown, Arkansas home with her newborn Josie, who arrived three months early. Like any mom of a preemie, there's a lot of "don't touch the baby" going on in the Duggar household, what with 18 others germing up the joint.
But the reality TV star of 19 Kids and Counting has got it covered. The 43-year-old uber mom spoke to ParentDish by phone yesterday about life with a preemie, the surprising cause of her baby's upset tummy and her own plans for losing the (19th) baby weight. An edited version of the interview follows.
ParentDish: Welcome home. How are you feeling? Michelle Duggar: I'm doing good. I feel much better than I did 7½ months ago, that's for sure. I'm so glad to have Josie home.
PD: Tell me about Josie? Is she your first preemie?
MD: Our second set of twins, Jedidiah and Jeremiah, came at about five weeks before their due date, but they were 5 lbs. each. They were in the hospital for about nine days. Jeremiah's lung collapsed and he had antibiotics. They're 11 years old now and just fine.
PD: Now about Josie.
MD: We are so thankful. It could've been much more serious. We're grateful that it was a diet change that made the difference for her. We changed from breast milk to a predigested formula that has no lactose, and within 12 hours she was better. And, within a week, she was pooing on her own, without us having to give her an enema. She was a totally different baby a week later.
PD: Wow, breast milk was the culprit?
MD: Typically, they never want to take a preemie off breast milk, but in her case the lactose in my milk was causing a problem. Her body was not producing lactase, which breaks down the lactose.
Back in May, we discovered a most adorable video of Jessica, a little girl who looked in the mirror and cheered to her daily affirmation that everything in her life is great.
Now, we found her younger self, meeting her newborn sister, Vanessa, for the first time. From the way she's able to quiet the baby, it's evident that Jessica is all about making everyone around her happy.
Our morning smile was inspired by Matty B, a 7-year-old rapper at the playground, who's got a great sound and some nifty pop-n-lock moves.
But don't dare say the obvious (shhhh ... he looks like Justin Bieber). At around :57 seconds, he sets us straight about that resemblance, adding, "There is nothing cute about rappin'. Capice?"
Yeah, we capice. But we still think you're pretty cute.
Some are calling this insensitive but at ParentDish, we call it a pure celebration of life.
Holocaust survivor Adolek Kohn never dreamed he would head back to the concentration camp 63 years later, but he did just that, bringing his grandchildren with him.
It was his daughter's idea to make a music video out of the experience.
"We came from the ashes, now we dance," Jane Korman told the Associated Press. She explains that she did it to "awaken people" in the hopes that it "would make them think again about this past."
Seems to us that this is more about the future. And for that, we applaud you.
At some point, everyone has a brush with greatness.
But when this young lady got smacked in the face by Seattle Mariners right fielder Ichiro Suzuki, she lost her mind. In a good way. And all cameras went in her direction, probably to the dismay of the guy behind her who actually grabbed the foul ball. And just to make sure we're seeing what we're seeing, this video has four different vantage points.
We can only hope that the person she was texting was her mom.
We're easily impressed when little kids do amazing things, but when a full-fledged, been-around-the-block-a-few-times grown-up does something beyond expectations, we do the happy dance.
And so it is, as this agile senior takes it to the dance floor to do his rendition of Pa-Pa-Pa Poker Face. We love the spread eagle at 2:12 and the split finale. Frankly, he's better than the two Jersey Shore-style boys who start out mocking him but soon realize they can't keep up.
A really good comedian has an excellent grasp of history. At least enough to entertain us. So when funny guy Bruce Fine came up with the idea to make a year-in-the-life time capsule video, sung to the tune of Billy Joel's "We Didn't Start The Fire," he had a pretty good sense that this was one of those good ideas.
Turns out he was right. ParentDish caught up with the stand-up comic and an edited version of the phone interview follows.
ParentDish: So you're a cool Los Angeles guy. Truth: Are those your real kids in the video or did you do a casting call?
Bruce Fine: That's my real wife, Shelby, and my real kids, Gabriel and Brady, in the video. We want people to see this and see how much fun the family can have.
PD: How did you come up with this idea?
BF: Someone on Facebook mentioned that it's 20 years since Billy Joel's "We Didn't Start The Fire" video came out. I had the idea of doing a time capsule of what it's like to be a dad now and live in this crazy country.
PD: So you're one of those rich comedians who can just reserve a studio and get it done?
BF: We did this for $150. Asher Glaser, my sidekick, used a little HD camera, like what someone would use on Thanksgiving. We borrowed a green screen from a comedian friend and then my son Gabriel came out dressed in a black jacket and sunglasses.
A scrumptious baby tops a cake any day. Credit: Courtesy of Amy Preiser
Is it okay to eat a piece of cake that's bigger than your grandchild's head? That was the conundrum at a Father's Day lunch this past weekend, as Grandpa Arnold was feted by his family at a Long Beach, California restaurant.
Our friend and colleague at ShelterPop, Amy Preiser, shared this photo of her 4-month-old niece Zoey, and we had to post it.
Frankly, Zoey is much more delicious than any piece of chocolate cake. Mommy Natalya, Daddy Mark, Grandma Sonia and Grandpa Arnold indulged in the cake, but the sweetest gift is truly this baby dumpling. Maybe next Father's Day, when Zoey has a little more mileage on her frilly attire, she'll join her older brother, 3-year-old Joshy, for a taste.
This dancing baby, who hails from the dance capital of the universe, Brazil, grooves an enviable samba. But many don't believe it's real video, including Today show anchor Ann Curry.
My money is on authenticity.
As a dancer all my life, I've seen kids, and yes, babies, who can move like this. They see their families get down and the little ones then do what they do best, mimic. It's not all that difficult to connect the dots.
Let's hope the family continues to post videos of the dancing baby so we can watch him bust a move on a regular basis.
It's been said for eons, a child's inner beauty transcends all barriers. Even if that barrier is failed high-school French. Thankfully, the subtitles help us out -- gotta love that disease "chicken box" -- but even without 'em, the creative purity of a little one's mind is remarkably captivating.
We hope she grows up to put her tales in print. The world needs her and her heavenly menagerie.
Raquel Welch says her kids, daughter Tahnee, left, and Damon, right, wouldn't give her an 'A' in parenting. Neither would she. Credit: DMI/Time Life Pictures/Getty Images
When you think Raquel Welch, you don't think mom. Well, maybe MILF, but only to those who are aware that she left her husband as a young mother in 1963 and took her two kids with her to Hollywood to become a star. What she became -- a worldwide sex symbol -- was not what she intended. And neglecting her young kids in order to pursue fame, was also not part of the plan.
She stayed silent on the topic for years, preferring to maintain her image as an untouched bombshell. In private, she says, she suffered.
This year, the woman who left men of the 1960s panting, is turning 70. And, after years of keeping her breasts out front and her personal life under wraps, she's written a tell-all, Beyond the Cleavage, about her beginnings, which includes a father who played emotional hide-and-seek with his daughter, her current man-crush and how sex is overrated. An edited version of an interview with the actress follows.
ParentDish: Gotta start with the obvious. When you set out, did you think, "I want to be America's sex symbol?"
Raquel Welch: Sex symbol was not my plan. Things don't always turn out the way you plan. I thought I would develop myself into a serious actress, but the studio system was in demise back then. There had been a star-making machine but that didn't exist when I got to Hollywood.
PD: But you became a star.
RW: People responded to me on a very surface level and that's the direction I took. I'm not going to complain about it; I wouldn't have had the career I had. Ginger Rogers, Rita Hayworth, Marilyn Monroe, they were actresses that I loved from that era. But by the time I came along, the whole profession changed radically.
Awwwww. That's what was heard over and over again during a recent screening of Thomas Balmès' new documentary "Babies." And to elicit that response from an audience of jaded New York journalists, that says something.
The film follows four babies from different corners of the globe: Ponijao from Namibia, Bayarjargal from Mongolia, Mari from Japan and Hattie from San Francisco, Calif. With minimal dialogue and no narration, we just watch as the babies go from birth to first steps, a 79-minute adventure that makes your ovaries ache.
Balmès, a Parisian father of three himself, talked with ParentDish about giving birth to this intense project.
ParentDish: How did you even begin to cast this documentary? Thomas Balmès: I wanted to find four loving families, four different environments, differences of wealth, different kinds of relationships, different from the Western way of living, like in Namibia and Mongolia. Japan was like a sci-fi atmosphere, like Blade Runner in Japan. I wanted a peer thing to be understood. This was not done to document from an anthropological point of view. The idea was to make a universal film on what it means to be a human being born today.
PD: As a father of young children, did you relate to anything during the filmmaking?
TB: I am French but like the Japanese father, I spend a lot of time surrounded by smart phones and computers and rarely spend a lot of time with my children by myself. People will recognize themselves in what they see. There's not one way of doing things. But I also felt a connection with the Mongolian and Namibian babies because their fathers were dealing with cattle far away from home.
