Drew Barrymore & Will Kopelman Plus Olive

Congrats to Drew Barrymore & Will Kopelman on the birth of their baby girl, Olive. We love Drew's work in this family with Never Been Kissed and Ever After on our daughters love to watch list. We can't wait to see what direction her creative energy will take as she finds herself inspired by motherhood!

LeapFrog, Michael Milken, Lowell Milken, and Larry Ellison, Sponsor Education.com

What new parent has not heard of Leap Frog? We have a Leap Frog Globe, Full set of Leap Frog DVD's, Leap frog Phonics thing that attaches to our magnetic kids pin board, Word Whammer, 3 readers with lots of books and cartridges in Spanish and English. We live in New Zealand. Why do the kids need Spanish? Donnell as anglo as she is, was born near the Mexican Border and with very strong SoCal links, thinks it is good for the kidlets to have an ear for the accent. LeapFrog Enterprises, is a leading developer of technology-based learning products and today announced its sponsorship of the new Learning to Read center on Education.com as part of LeapFrog's ongoing commitment to providing parents the best learn-to-read tools for their children. This new reading resource will provide easily accessible, high-quality educational and developmental reference and editorial content that address the critical and often challenging topic of learning to read.

The publicly traded company is majority owned by Knowledge Universe, Inc., a private company with worldwide interests in education-related businesses. Knowledge Universe was founded by financier Michael Milken, his brother Lowell, and Larry Ellison, founder of the software firm Oracle Corporation.

As a trusted leader in creating fun and engaging learning experiences for children, LeapFrog is uniquely positioned to team up with Education.com, a comprehensive, one-stop destination that allows parents to take an active role in their children's education from pre-school through grade 12.

"LeapFrog is excited about our work with Education.com on this important initiative that delivers on our core mission of making learning fun while helping children reach important educational milestones," said Zachary Fisher, vice president of corporate strategy and business development at LeapFrog.

The LeapFrog learning brand is trusted by parents, valued by teachers, and loved by children around the world. With almost 35 million educational platforms and almost 90 million interactive books and games in homes worldwide, and multi-sensory technology in over 100,000 U.S. classrooms, LeapFrog looks forward to sponsoring the new Learning to Read resource for parents who want to take an active role in their children's education.

"Every parent has questions concerning their children's education but is unsure where to find answers. Those who turn to the Web find that educational resources are fragmented and inconsistent," said Ron Fortune, CEO of Education.com. "The ultimate goal of Education.com is to empower parents to help their children. Education is not strictly limited to academic instruction, so whether it's helping parents choose a school or helping keep kids happy, healthy and motivated, our hope is to provide a resource that minimizes the time spent searching for answers and allows for more time to focus on a child's education."

According to a recent Education.com survey conducted by Harris Interactive(R), 74 percent of parents of children ages 18 and under said they wished they had a single resource they could turn to for information and answers about education and 96 percent of parents believe they need to take an active role in their children's education in order to fill in the gaps in public school education. LeapFrog looks forward to building on the relationship with Education.com to find unique and effective ways to assist parents with learning solutions for their children.

Children Are Amazing!

Our girls are 21 months and last night Sienna started to read...... I'm still blown away....it was at true memory, because she can read many more words today.

She gave me her Humpback Whale story one of 100's of their books...and gave me a giggle...instead of me reading the first few pages, she did!!

Blessed

Our babies are soooo cool, fun and happy. We fell very blessed/fortunate/happy and totally and utterly intrigued. It is hard to believe they are really ours!  ( The 'real parents' haven't turned up so we've still got them!) Sienna...loves 'D' words like Dad, duck, dog....if only we could send the sounds this child makes!

Marlana....such a lover of life, as she says to the question, have you had a good day? "All day!" she replies.

We're currently packing up what turned into a big event for us. Donnell and I had an anniversary. We built a stage and put up a concert rig for NZ's top jazz band...and we built a dance floor too, all in our garden with the background of our almost finished house. It was a beautiful night. Our girls loved the music and the dancing bit. Sienna exhausted herself and went to bed gratefully....Marlana giggled, sung, chortled and Rocked till she dropped. She loved the singer....and Caitlin (the singer) loved having Marlana sharing the spot light.

Parenthood - Living Life At Autobahn Speed

Saw 'Something's Gotta Give' a few weeks ago and got nostalgic for Sagaponack, NY. Work has been full on.  I'm sort of trying to catch-up with 2003.... yet 2004 is galloping along at a autobahn rate. Our baby girls are 'princess' material from the day they were born. It was and unexpected and pleasant surprise when Sienna and Marlana started to get baby gifts and flowers from clients all over the world, household names, that certainly could be forgiven for having too much to do than spend a few minutes thinking about our girls.  As Donnell says, It's always nice to find out someone really cares for you, more than you realized they did.

Our files are next door at our house that used to be our home/office.......currently an extraordinary building site...our sweet little 3 bedroom batch of a place is being transformed in to a 5 bedroom Donnell design 'American' dolls house with reasonably large Kitchen living out the back. We're putting on an entire 2 story nursery etc. We're recycling the timber from a 2 stored home in St Heliers, and if we're successful will add wonderful features.

Donnell is successfully feeding both babies as I write....sort of out of necessity...they were both screaming at once! I do the 6:00 am feed with expressed milk, and help with the others as I can....but the twin feed I haven't seen very often........it's not as easy as it looks.

We are in a different club now!  Everyone would always assume I had children....now it's true!!