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Jan 16 2009 01:00 PM ET
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Jerry O’Connell Introduces Dolly and Charlie!

Jerry O’Connell is one proud papa. So proud, in fact, that the actor cannot help but show off baby pictures on national television. “I don’t want to be one of those guys who is like, ‘Look at my babies,’” Jerry, 34, said, joking with Kelly Ripa while co-hosting Live with Regis and Kelly on Friday. “The second you have kids, you can’t help but be like, ‘I happen to have some photos of my children.’”

The actor and wife Rebecca Romijn welcomed fraternal twin girls, Dolly Rebecca Rose and Charlie Tamara Tulip, on December 28th. Since becoming a first-time dad, Jerry is learning a lot – and has become a bit health and hygiene-obsessed. “I do wash my hands all the time,” he said, noting that he also picked up one important tip: How to properly change his daughters’ diapers and wipe. “Front to back,” Jerry noted, prompting laughs from Kelly and the audience.

One other tip to parents: Speak to children like they are adults. “I really try to not speak in baby talk,” he said of his chats with the girls, now 2 ½-weeks. “I want them to be intelligent.”

As for his growing family, Jerry said he’s super-thrilled that he has twins. “These are my first kids and Rebecca’s first kids, and you can’t imagine just having one. It’s so much fun to have two of them. You throw them in the crib and they just play with each other.”

The actor also credited his wife for being so hands on. “I have to give a lot of kudos to my wife,” he told Kelly. “[She] is now waking up every three hours and doing what we call the ‘Double Football,’” Jerry said. “They eat at the same time!”


Courtesy Regis & Kelly for use on CBB

Source: PEOPLE — video at the link!

– Brian Orloff

Comments (41) + Add a comment

check out all that hair! they are absolutely beauitful!

- melissa on

Oh My god. They are so beautiful. Awww. They melt my heart

- Natasha on

Beautiful, sweet baby girls!…Dolly and Charlie look very happy and content…Congratulations Rebecca and Jerry!!…They seem to be adjusting fabulously…God Bless.

- Nona on

Awww, they are so gorgeous and what beautiful smiles!!
I love Jerry, I love the way he speaks about his daughters. A man who can’t speak about anythig else than babies is really cute to me, I love these true men.

- Stéph on

Jerry and Rebecca seem to have a huge sense of humor!!! They are going to be fun parents.

- mary on

those girls are definitely o’connell girls! beautiful!

- gigi on

dolly looks just like jerry!!
that big smile is just so cute:)

- heather on

How great that Rebecca is breastfeeding twins! You go girl. They are very cute and I have to agree with Steph, I just love hearing daddies talk about their kids.

- Brandi on

Those girls are beautiful. And they are the cutest looking little pink baby burritos all swaddled up like that, lol. :)

- FC on

CUTE, CUTE, CUTE!!!!!!

- XOXO on

I just love the way he shows baby to the world ,this is so much better than in a photoshoot ..BTW girls are gorgeous:)

- martyna on

They are absolutely adorable and I am happy to read she is nursing! Good for her on learning the double football!

- ishouldbedoinglaundry on

They are soooooooooo cute they have a head full of hair and they look just like their daddy and I love their names

- Crystle on

OMG! They are beyond cute! I agree, FC, they look like little cute pink burritos!

I love it when dad’s gush about their kids, so adorable. Rebecca and Jerry make such a cute couple! Yay Rebecca for breastfeeding twins! That is awesome, I had such a hard time feeding one ;) .

They are beyond cute, makes me totally want a little girl or two ;)

- D on

sweet babies! though i don’t think they’re actually, you know, playing together yet. my triplets didn’t even notice each other until they were about 4-5 months old.

- pyjammy on

The girls are adorable, and it’s so nice to read how dedicated Jerry O’Connell already is. But in general, the way you talk to the babies does not have much to do with the intelligence they’ll have in their later life. Talking as if to adults is actually not recommended, because babies like listening to rather high voices (I don’t know how to say it; they like high frequencies and cooing and all those things) and focus their attention on that.

I’m not saying that parents shouldn’t talk properly to their kids, but using a different tone of voice and talking ‘customized’ to kids is better.

Moms actually do it automatically in most cases, just like they intuitively hold their baby after birth in the range of seeing the baby has. It’s called caretaker speech. It’s amazing =)

- Kate on

I was about to say the same….I have 7 month old twins and they definitely didn’t care about each other the first couple of months! Now it’s the best watching them play and giggle!

- sally on

“THROW them in a crib”. That is a riot! Something my husband would say.

- Gina on

cute! I love how large the ‘finger’ in the picture looks compared to their little heads…makes the babies look teeny-tiny! What a funny camera angle!

- brooklyn on

Kate, I was thinking he meant more of the words he uses, not the tone of voice (saying bottle instead of baba, for instance). I learned in some of my childhood psych classes that the vocabulary you use can impact the children’s vocabulary (I wouldn’t necessarily say intelligence) down the road. For instance, my cousin still speaks to her 4 year old using “baby words” and he is pretty delayed in speaking. My husband and I have decided to try to keep “baby talk” to a minimum around our kids. You’re right though: the different tone is better for little kids. One of my professors said something along the lines of how we’re almost programmed to speak in higher tones of voice to babies because they are so darn cute (and interestingly, we tend to adopt the same tone of voice when speaking to the elderly).

The girls are very cute!!!

- MZ on

I speak to my 22-month daughter using normal vocabulary (she’s going to sound like a dictionary someday if she learns all the words I use with her), but I still use a higher tone with her at times like I did when she was a baby.

It’s funny, though, that I talk to our dog in the same higher pitch — always have, and he’s 6 years old. I’m in no way saying that animals and children are the same (they are definitely apples and oranges!), but they do seem to share the similar trait of responding well to higher pitch and a more lovey-dovey way form of communication.

- Amanda on

brooklyn: I was thinking the same thing. That finger is either really big or those babies are really tiny. My son was 4 1/2 lbs. at birth and you forget how tiny that is. He’s a year now and still small but a giant compared to his birth weight.

- Kristi on

Kristi, I am glad someone other than me noticed that! My daughter was just over 4lbs at birth, as well…yes, it does not take long to forget how tiny they were. She is now 11 and does not believe me when I tell her she used to fit into doll clothes!

- brooklyn on

The finger isn’t in the picture, it’s Jerry’s finger which is holding the picture.

- G on

MZ, thanks for your reply =) I’ve got childhood psych classes too, college-level as well, and you pretty much said what I couldn’t (English isn’t my first language; try expressing technical terms you know by heart in another language). At work, and in our class, we had the same examples of speech development not working as well then; but I still think and agree that it doesn’t have to do with intelligence.

- Kate on

I noticed that as well! Maybe 3 and a half pounds at birth? I think so. They’re so adorable and tiny!

- M on

That is a picture he is holding up!That’s why they are so tiny!

- Mimi on

They are absolutely gorgeous!

- Lily on

So pretty! Which is not suprising with two attractive parents.

- Elaina on

Too cute and so funny! I do find it interesting and funny what parents will sometimes say early on and how their opinions can sometimes change later. The girls are only 2 weeks old, it seems a bit early to be talking about them playing together, or raising their intelligence by not using baby talk, LOL! They’ve barely taken their first breath!

On the topic of baby talk versus animal talk, research has found that baby talk, or “motherese” is probably biologically driven and babies respond to it better than they do adult language (and it might help them learn grammar more quickly and easily because of the different stresses and intonations on the end of words and sentences, as well as repetition). When we use baby talk with pets or animals, although it sounds similar (the same cooing voice) it’s actually different; the stresses are different when analyzed and researchers think that’s because we unconsciously know that we’re not teaching the animal grammar or language, we’re just talking to it.

- Sara on

Those babies look just like their daddy! It”ll be so much fun to see them as they get a little older.

- Mia on

I am a twin and I was born sick and small (3 pounds) so I was in a humidi crib but my identical sister was much bigger and stronger. ANYWAY the hospital got my parents to drive her in every night (as she was discharged being a healthy 7 and 1/2 pound whopper) so we could sleep together because if she was around I would settle and sleep and feed better. So they may not be playing together but I think twins are born with an immediate bond, just like the one a baby has for its mother whose heartbeat it has heard all its life.

- Fevvers on

Aww, they have the cutest lil faces!

- jasmine on

He seemed so excited and happy this morning on the show, it was so sweet to see. Both the babies look just like jerry.

- Gianna on

these are the new stars in Hollywood!!! ;-)

- Anke on

Aww. They are so cute!!!!

- Emma on

They are so cute!
and he is too funny!

- Jae on

Fevvers- Exactly! Back in late October or early November (I forget which) of last year, Angelina Jolie talked about how Knox and Vivienne are “made for each other” and how they “interact” with each other. At the time, Knox and Viv were only 3-4 months old. I think she, too, was speaking more about the special bond that twins share.

- CelebBabyLover on

I love love LOVE that Jerry’s showing off snapshots of his kids on the telly instead of staging a photoshoot and auctioning off pictures for millions he doesn’t need. How cool is that? :o )

- Jill-e-b on

The little girl on the left (Dolly?) looks just like Jerry and the one on the right (Charlie?) looks just like Rebecca, IMO. :) Both beautiful babies.

- Sabina on

Awesome that she’s breastfeeding! Way to go. Beautiful babies.

- JJ on

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