Charlize Theron has opened up about the special sibling relationship between her two adoptive children.
The actress was at the premiere of her new film The Huntsman: Winter’s War on Monday night when she told reporters about the affectionate relationship her four-year-old son Jackson has formed with her baby daughter August.
Of the bond the 40-year-old actress said it’s “a love that is unbelievable to watch.”
Theron, who herself was an only child, told EXTRA that when she sees her kids together it feels like “I’m watching something so sacred and beautiful.”
She adds, “He walks into a room and he doesn’t even look at her and she just lights up. I’m in front of her going crazy trying to get a reaction… It’s so beautiful.”
But Charlize, who adopted baby August in July last year, said she can’t see herself adding to her brood because her “hands are really full right now”.
“I think I’m good for now,” said Charlize. “My son (Jackson) is like, ‘Let’s get a cat,’ and I’m like, ‘No! No! No more things that need to be fed! We’re slowing down.”
But being a single mum hasn’t slowed down the actress’ career.
On Sunday night South African-born Charlize nabbed the award for best female performance for her role as Imperator Furiosa in Mad Max: Fury Road — and she used her speech to thank her children and accept the award “on behalf of my own Furiosa, my daughter.”
“There’s not one moment where I don’t realize how unbelievably lucky I have it,” Theron said. “They’re little gems, they really are. They’re amazing.”
Adding: “There was no way I couldn’t thank my son because it was a tough movie for me to make. And he was in the trailer every single day.”
Our neighbours have two boys as we do. They have an older pairing than ours (11 and seven versus six and three).
Our eldest loves hanging out at their house. They have cool, more grown-up stuff, they get to stay up later and watch more movies. Generally I think we are very much on the same page regarding parenting, and we’re all reasonably relaxed.
I definitely want to encourage the family friendship, we all get on really well and they throw the best parties.
However, their boys play Minecraft – a lot. And now their two friends, who are six and seven years old, seem to spend most of their time there not on the trampoline or riding their scooters up and down the street but playing this game.
So tell me Danielle how do I manage this?!
From Friendly Neighbour
Hi Friendly Neighbour,
I feel your pain. I would want to stay on the good side of the neighbours who throw cracking parties too!
The issue with what’s going on at their house is exactly that – it’s going on at their house. If you want your kids to go over there and play, you don’t really get a say in what they’re doing unless it’s detrimental to their wellbeing.
If that parent is ok with six kids in her house playing video games, it’s a little bit tricky to suggest otherwise.
One way you could tackle it is by inviting them all over to your house and setting up a really simple but fun obstacle course in the garden. You don’t need equipment, just a guideline that you jump over X, at the stick, you do a commando roll, run around the tree, and then crawl on your tummy to the gate, etc.
Or you could do a simple treasure hunt with a cheap, crappy prize that kids seem to love so much.
You need to make it so fun that they want to play outdoors and not computer games… The draw-back of this plan is then you have six kids in your garden instead of at your neighbour’s house.
Alternatively you could broach it very gently with your neighbour but if they take umbrage and you lose your party invite, don’t blame me.
Good luck!
Dear Danielle,
I have a friend who is always unhappy with her life. She’s a smart and funny girl who I enjoy spending time with but she is never happy with her life.
At first I began trying to help her. When her marriage was bad I tried to help her decide what to do, even offering her a place to stay.
When she hated her job, I tried to help her find a new one, but I’m starting to realise that she really doesn’t want to do anything to change her situation. She never tries to help herself. When I spend time with her, I feel like she’s draining me.
She would swear she’s a happy-go-lucky girl who just doesn’t get a break but I’m starting to judge her for her enjoyment of her misery.
What should I do about this friendship?
From, Happy-Go-Lucky
Hi Happy-Go-Lucky,
You know the old saying “you can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make it drink”? You need to just let her do her thing.
Some people truly love misery because when people give them sympathy, it makes them feel special. Others just like to wallow in how unfair life is.
The thing about friends like this is they suck the life of you. Our lives are all so busy and full that we need to surround ourselves with people that replenish our energy – I like to call it filling my love cup.
If someone only drinks from my love cup, I walk away depleted, but if someone fills my love cup I walk away joyous. You need to decide if the level in your love cup is adequate enough to continue this friendship.
It sounds to me like your love cup is getting low in this friendship.
Maybe spend less time with her, or just accept that she is happy with her miserable life and you focus on your life and keeping only positive things in it.
Take care.
Danielle is not a qualified counsellor and all advice is opinion-based only, to be followed at the responsibility of the recipient.
Do you have a dilemma or conundrum you would like to ask Danielle?
Drop her a line at [email protected] and she will endeavour to help you sort your life out.
Michael Douglas couldn’t help but share a moment of triumph with his Facebook fans this week, uploading a photo of his son, Dylan, presenting a powerful speech at a school fundraising event in New York.
On Monday April 11, Dylan Michael Douglas took to the stage – in his finest suit, no less – to address the audience attending the Windward School fundraiser event.
His delighted father took a sneaky snap and uploaded it to social media with the caption: “So proud of Dylan! Speaking at a Windward School fundraiser.”
It seems that like most parents on Facebook, the proud father simply couldn’t wait to share his son’s achievement.
15-year-old Dylan – who is the eldest child from the marriage between Michael and Catherine Zeta-Jones – has long struggled with the reading and writing disorder, dyslexia, and attends the specialised Windward School in New York for his difficulties.
The 71-year-old actor revealed his son’s battle with the learning disability back in 2010 in a candid interview with The Guardian.
“My son deals with dyslexia to a degree,” he said of his then-10 year old.
“It runs in the family and my brother has it. He goes to a special school.”
Understandably, seeing his son take to the stage to deliver a stirring speech would have been a huge moment for the family.
The proud papa loves his children.
Michael and Catherine lived in Bermuda for 10 years before they relocated to New York along with their son and daughter Carys, who will be 13 later this month.
It was a move made to ensure their son Dylan had the best help with his learning difficulties.
“We lived in Bermuda until last September,” he said in an interview with Parade Magazine.
“One of our kids has some special needs and it was recommended he go to a special school in the New York area. Knowing that, Catherine said, ‘Well, look, I’ll do a musical.’”
All grown up! The happy family pictured together at the Ant Man premiere last year.
The happy couple tied the knot in November 2000 after Michael fell in love with the brunette beauty at an event.
“I was just bowled over by Catherine,” the Fatal Attraction actor admitted to The Guardian.
“The first time I saw her I was watching The Mask of Zorro. I just sat forward and said, ‘Who is that?’”
“We met for the first time later that year at a film festival. I was smitten with her, no doubt. I wasn’t quite the son-in-law her parents had envisioned! I do like to wind up Catherine’s father and call him Pops,” he joked.
Watch Michael Douglas open up on his rough patch with Catherine Zeta-Jones in the video player below!
Loading the player...
The Welsh actress and her husband celebrated their 15th wedding anniversary last November.
Fresh from their escape to the Northern Territory, which was punctuated with endless bickering, Jono Pittman moved into his pseudo wife Clare Verrall’s home.
And to say it imploded is an understatement.
From the start, the couple were off-kilter and struggled to get through a single conversation without it blowing up into a Titanic-sized fight.
Watch the newlyweds’ huge fight in the player above!
“The way Jono reacts when he is frustrated is ridiculous. I think Jono lacks a little bit of understanding around his moods and temper and the fact that he gets hangry,” 32-year-old Clare confessed.
In a bid to help the tradie control his short fuse, the bubbly blonde suggested some breathing techniques.
But Jono, 28, wasn’t having a bar of it and snapped back at his partner for “trying to tell him what to do.”
Clare was devastated that they couldn’t seem to gel.
“Sometimes I don’t feel like doing breathing exercises. She means really well by it but I don’t really like being told what to do, never have, I don’t think I ever will,” he said.
Tensions boiled over yet again when the pair took Clare’s French Bulldogs for a stroll with Jono refusing to pick up the dog’s poo.
Later in the episode, Jono and Clare tried to enjoy a date night at a wine bar but Clare became offended when her husband started talking about exercise.
Jono is a firm believer in never making an excuse and you should train every day, while Clare admits sometimes life gets in the way and she’s too busy to work out.
Jono’s short fuse is a source of tension for the couple.
“I’m going to go to the bathroom but you have fun with your receptionist at the gym,” the 32-year-old muttered as left the table.
“She thinks I’ve got something going on with the receptionist at the gym,” a horrified Jono snapped back.
After yet another tiff during a beach outing, a fed up Jono packed his belongings and headed back to his own home for some space.
“She’s a really awesome, gorgeous girl. But every time we have a conversation we butt heads. What do I do? Do I walk away? End it sooner rather than later. Or, do I try to find that spark that we had at the honeymoon?” Jono wondered.
In a dramatic teaser for next week’s episode, the show hints that one couple call it quits just three weeks into the experiment.
At my 12-week scan, I was told I had a one in two chance of my baby having Down Syndrome. One in two sounds like 50/50 but it’s actually not. Anything that’s one in 300 or under is considered high chance so one in two is about as conclusive as it can get.
The doctors say “I’m sorry but there is something wrong with your baby” before they break the news of Down Syndrome, so you’re expecting something bad. When I heard those words I felt like my world was ending.
This pregnancy was our third child and my brain had many irrational thoughts in that moment. I thought my husband might leave me, I thought I had done something wrong. I was devastated.
My friend had been watching my kids and they came and met me. I was all teary eyed and upset, and my children asked me what was the matter.
“There’s something wrong with the baby,” I told them. “She has Down Syndrome.”
My kids went to school with a boy who has Down Syndrome and they couldn’t understand why it would be a problem. They loved that kid whom they considered their friend, I also thought he was a great kid and his family were a beautiful family. In that moment I started to see things slightly differently.
I still went to bed for a day and cried, but we decided to have more testing done to see if we could find out more information.
Further testing revealed that our daughter also had hydrops, a condition that occurs in foetuses when they accumulate fluid in their body. Her nucal fold was flooded, she had fluid in her skull and in her chest cavity. They told us she was unlikely to survive. We were watching her white little body moving around on the dark screen and I thought that would be the last time I saw her.
Suddenly, in the face of our baby dying, Down Syndrome wasn’t important anymore. I was so sad and we just waited for the pregnancy to miscarry. But she didn’t. Our 19-week scan showed no sign of hydrops and our baby was going to make it, and I am so incredibly grateful for that little shining light who brings so much joy to our family.
There aren’t degrees of Down Syndrome, you either have it or you don’t, but just as all people are different and unique so are people with Down Syndrome. They have different skill levels and communication levels. The tests only tell you that there is an extra chromosome, and it cannot tell you anything about the kind of life your child will lead however there has never been a better time to have a child with Down Syndrome.
If your child is born with heart issues they can often be fixed early, and early intervention can help with many of the other issues such as speech and development. They go to mainstream schools, and there are work opportunities. Once upon a time children born with Down Syndrome were institutionalised, but now they are valued as just another child in the family with their own special qualities.
When she was inside me Josee was deemed a defect, she was an abnormality, but now I have this amazing little girl who has taught us so much about life. She has peeled away every layer of my beliefs, and attitudes and perceptions are stripped away and rebuilt. She has shown us what life is really like, and that this whole perception of perfection that society craves is ridiculous and unattainable.
We believe our life is perfect and that she is perfect, as are our other two children.
My other kids are growing up as compassionate people because of their sister, they don’t have prejudice and they are very accepting of people. They adore her, and she adores them.
Josee is so smart, at just over three she can read about 150 words, and she can also sign 150 words, and she’s a little behind other kids in gross motor skills but it wouldn’t matter where she sat developmentally, I would still love her to bits.
She loves to play babies and mummies and she enjoys painting and nature. She rides horses and loves riding the quad bike with her dad. Really, she is just like every other kid.
I now hope to create a set of pre-natal guidelines for a “model of care” to be used nationally so all women whose babies have this diagnosis get the same information and prenatal care. If one doctor makes it a negative while another doctor explains that it’s not the end of the world, there is no consistency in care.
I’m not suggesting that we diagnose it with super positivity, but neutrality gives women more room to make up their own minds. Often women are given only a short space of time to make a decision about termination so there is already so much pressure on her. I’m pro-choice but I’m also pro-educated choice.
Maybe without negative messages at the point of diagnosis, more families will be able to see that Down Syndrome can also positively impact a family and make it that little bit more special.
To see more of Josee’s journey, you can follow her on Facebook here.
FOR MORE INFORMATION AND SUPPORT ABOUT DOWN SYNDROME
Despite engagement rumours, Us Weekly have reported that it’s over for the Hollywood couple.
The news comes as a shock for fans, as it was only recently that the pair was spotted looking particularly loved-up at the 2016 Golden Globes.
Proving once again that what you see, isn’t always what you get.
The couple put on a united front at the 2016 Golden Globes.
The couple, who made their relationship debut in January 2012, were living together in Los Angeles and were rumoured to approaching an engagement.
Their utter adoration for each other has never been a secret, with both Kristen and Garrett taking turns to gush about the other in multiple interviews.
Speaking to Town & Country, the Bring It On leading lady opened up to say that things were going “really well” with her beau.
“We’re the same age. We have similar backgrounds,” the 33-year-old said. “He feels like family to me.”
In August 2014, the Fargo actress also admitted her near-future plans of starting a family.
“I want to continue acting, but I also want to have kids,” the blonde beauty said in a November interview with Net-A-Porter.
“I think I’ll be ready to have them in two years or something.”
The split news comes as a surprise amid rumours of a potential engagement.
And while Kirsten doesn’t appear to be seeing anyone new, she does have an idea of what she looks for in a life partner.
“I appreciate old-fashioned manners,” she recently shared with Net-A-Porter’s The Edit. “I want a guy to pay for dinner and open the door for me. I love the masculine.”
Kirsten and Garrett, 31, met while co-starring in the film adaptation of Jack Kerouac’s On the Road in 2011.
Watch Kirsten talk about hers and Garrett’s awkward first date in the video player below!
Fans were left wondering who the baby’s father is, after she showed off her bump yesterday.
Who’s the daddy!?
Taking it into her stride, the 29-year-old shared a photo of her three past co-stars — Shia LaBeouf, Will Arnett and Jake Johnson — along with the hashtag “#notthefather”.
Despite the fact that the mum-of-two is estranged from her husband, Brian Green Austin, People confirm he is the dad.
“Of course Brian is the dad! They never stopped loving each other and they will never stop being devoted parents to their boys,” a source close to the pair revealed.
Now that’s what we call a baby bump!
The pregnancy came as a surprise for the couple who are “very excited” and are “continuing to work on their marriage and are living together again,” another insider quipped.
The couple are already parents to Noah, three and two-year-old Bodhi.
“They both love being parents,” a close pal admitted about the duo.
Megan filed for divorce in August after five years of marriage and 11 years together.
The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles leading lady and the 42-year-old have remained amicable since announcing their split.
The former couple stepped out together in Santa Monica, less than one day after the she revealed she was expecting. Onlookers noticed they appeared to “be in good spirits”.
Megan and Brian have yet to officially comment on their exciting news.
NSW residents now have the ability to learn how many guns people own in the area, and the results are frightening.
Information obtained through the NSW Police by the NSW Greens shows that there are more 2,400 firearms each in over 100 suburbs, and there are nine suburbs that have more than 100,000.
As of July 2015, there were a total 850,634 registered guns across the state.
You can now access the statistics in your own suburb through the Toomanyguns.org site.
“When it comes to law reform that information is powerful.”
The website allows you to see information like how many registered firearm owners there are, the number of firearms, and the largest number of guns held by a one individual.
This list shows the highest number of guns owned by one person (but excludes guns by collectors and arms dealers):
Newcastle – 322
Moonbi – 313
Chifley, Eastgardens, Matraville, Little Bay, Hillsdale, La Perouse, Malabar, Phillip Bay and Port Botany – 302
Mosman – 278
North Sydney – 267
Alstonvale , Alstonville, Bagotville, Cabbage Tree Island, Dalwood, East Wardell, Lynwood, Meerschaum Vale, Pearces Creek, Rous, Rous Mill, Tuckombil, Uralba, Wardell and Wollongbar- 239
Manly – 207
Dubbo – 205
Amaroo, Boomey, Cundumbul, Molong, Euchareena, Garra, Larras Lee, The Shades and Warnecliffe – 186
Belrose and Davidson – 181
“There are a good many angry online comments that suggest we have breached people’s privacy but we were very conscious of that and that’s why we always felt sharing the data on a postcode basis was best – and not individual names or addresses,” says Mr Shoebridge.
With the 20th anniversary of the Port Arthur massacre of April 28, 1996, nearing, The Greens are seeking to review current gun laws.
They want to eliminate the loophole which allows people to own as many firearms as they wish as long as they’re registered. The Greens are calling for a reform that someone needs to have a “separate and extraordinary reason” for owning each additional gun after already owning five.
Mr Shoebridge wrote on his website: “Farmers on rural properties often require firearms for euthanising injured stock or controlling wild invasive animals. Target shooting at a registered gun club is also a long-recognised and legitimate sport.”
According to the Australian Institute of Criminology, NSW is the most registered firearms over any other state, with 850,000. Next up is Victoria with 695,108 firearms, which ranges from air rifles, paintball guns, machine guns, cannons, etc.
Trending video: Melbourne mother charged with killing daughter Sanaya
They keep us laughing every morning on Today and now Karl Stefanovic, Lisa Wilkinson and Sylvia Jeffreys have been named as hosts of the red carpet for the 58th TV WEEK Logie Awards.
For all the red carpet hits and misses on TV’s night of nights, Karl, Lisa and Sylvia will be there, guiding us through it all while chatting to all our favourite TV personalities.
After famously wearing the same suit for a whole year, what we’re all wondering is whether Karl will wear a new suit for the big night?
