Multiple Births

Three-and-a-half-year-old Frankie Walter has become so accustomed to the expressions of amazement he encounters on family outings that he now offers a stock response. "Yes," he chirps, often before those who are staring can compose themselves, "we are quite a handful." Such is the scene when the Walters--Frankie; his parents Deborah and Ralph; and the 2-year-old triplets, Michael, Mollie and Richard--venture out of their Victorian house here.

Finishing a TV interview the other morning, director David Cronenberg eyed a nearby glass of water. "Is it actually OK to drink the tap water here?" he wondered cautiously, having just flown in from Toronto to plug his new film, "Dead Ringers." The TV reporter gave good grades to the water, but advised against eating the fish that swim in it. "Fair enough," Cronenberg replied with a grin. "If any fish come out of the tap, I definitely won't eat them."

Move over, Brangelina and your $14-million twins. There are some new babies in town. Whittier mother Nadya Suleman and her eight week-old babies are entertaining offers from media outlets around the world as they decide who will land the first interview and snap the first pictures. Suleman -- a 33-year-old unmarried mother who already has six children between the ages of 2 and 7, including a set of twins -- remained hospitalized Monday along with the octuplets, who continue to improve.

There was joy and relief in the jampacked delivery room at Long Beach Memorial Medical Center. Patty Shier of Westchester had just given birth to five good-sized, wailing, pink babies, probably the healthiest quintuplets ever born in the United States. A few miles away in a Torrance medical office, seven months of worry began to fade from the face of Dr. Rifaat Salem, who had used in vitro fertilization to help Shier become pregnant.

Two Brentwood publicists said they dropped octuplets mom Nadya Suleman as a client Saturday because they have received a slew of death threats. Suleman, a 33-year-old Whittier resident, was unmarried, unemployed and already had six children using a sperm donor when she gave birth to eight children from the same donor Jan. 26 at Kaiser Permanente Medical Center in Bellflower.

An El Cajon woman who arranged the adoption of twin girls caught up in an international custody battle runs an Internet service that is part of an unlicensed and unregulated--but legal--industry that some find troubling. Like other for-profit adoption brokers, or "facilitators," Tina Johnson and her Caring Heart Adoption service operate within a gap in the state's otherwise strict laws regulating adoption agencies, most of which are run by nonprofit groups, officials said.

Kevin Struve's birth 18 years ago was so unusual, Walter Cronkite mentioned it during his newscast that night. Reporters across the country called the Struve home in Claremont for the next several weeks. "I heard from people I hadn't talked to in years," said Richard Struve, Kevin's father. "Everybody wanted to know how it happened?" Richard did not have all the medical answers, but he could tell the callers that Kevin, a fraternal quadruplet, and his siblings were alive.

The Whittier mother of octuplets and six other children, including a set of twins, has filed at least two claims for workers' compensation, according to state records. Few details were available about Nadya Suleman's first injury, which occurred in 1999 while she was a psychiatric technician at Metropolitan State Hospital in Norwalk.

From the time they entered the world two minutes apart, Javier and Oscar Molina shared everything: bunk beds and a bathroom, honors classes and sports teams. For much of their 18 years, the Commerce twins have also shared a passion for boxing, and a dream of competing in the Olympics. Now they are one step away from sharing a trip to Beijing -- with a historic twist.

Urinating on buildings, hanging footlong drool, gorging on junk food and acting like a brat are behaviors kids are usually discouraged from doing. But not so for 6-year-old identical twins Cole and Dylan Sprouse of Woodland Hills. Recently they were encouraged by older folks to commit these childish transgressions and more, and then congratulated for doing such a fine job with them.