Replies

Dannielynn Documented, Going Home with Dad

by Natalie Finn
Mon, 30 Apr 2007 04:49:05 PM PDT

After waiting this long, a little Bahamian bureaucracy sure wasn’t going to keep Larry Birkhead from taking his baby girl home.

The doting dad today secured a temporary passport for seven-month-old Dannielynn, E! News has learned, and the duo is due back in the United States as early as Tuesday. The 34-year-old newly minted father of one will be taking his daughter to his hometown of Louisville, Kentucky.

Calling it the most expensive picture he ever took, in light of the lengthy legal battle he was forced to wage just to be declared Dannielynn’s biological daddy, Birkhead snapped his daughter’s passport pic himself, per MSNBC.

To expedite the process, the Los Angeles-based photographer obtained a revised birth certificate for her last Friday—one listing him, rather than Howard K. Stern, as the father and changing the child’s last name to Birkhead.

Dannielynn’s arrival on U.S. soil will mark the end of a pretty twisted era, one that, despite all the turmoil, she won’t even remember.

Anna Nicole Smith’s second child was born in the Bahamas on Sept. 7, and Stern had been caring for her there since her mom’s sudden death from an accidental prescription-drug overdose on Feb. 8.

Earlier this month, a DNA test determined that Birkhead was the baby’s father and Stern vowed not to stand in their way, saying he planned to remain in the Bahamas, where Smith and her 20-year-old son Daniel are buried. Daniel, the only child from her first marriage to Billy Wayne Smith, died three days after Dannielynn’s birth.

Despite a last-ditch attempt from Smith’s estranged mother, Virgie Arthur, to keep the father-daughter duo in the Bahamas until further custody matters were hammered out, a three-judge panel gave Birkhead the go-ahead to leave on Friday. A final custody hearing is scheduled for June 8.

In the meantime, Birkhead will be busy adjusting to being with child.

“It’s a lot of heartache,” he told Entertainment Tonight regarding the ordeal that has led up to this moment. “It’s a struggle to get to where you can actually have those moments to celebrate…I think everyone thinks because they see me waving birth certificates or jumping up out of court, it’s all fun, but it’s not.”

“I’m just getting ready to be a dad,” he said. “Officially, on my own soil.”

But although, by heading to Kentucky, he’s avoiding the glare of Hollywood for now, Birkhead’s datebook is certainly not devoid of high-profile events.

One of his first stops will be the site of his and Smith’s first meeting, the Barnstable Brown Gala. At the annual charity fundraiser, which precedes the running of the Kentucky Derby, Birkhead will rub elbows with the likes of Jimmy Fallon, Jenny McCarthy, Vanessa Minnillo, Jerry O’Connell, Joey Fatone, Nick Lachey, Bill O’Reilly, Raquel Welch, Kid Rock, Chad Michael Murray, Terry O’Quinn, Jewel, Jason Lewis, Travis Tritt, the Dixie Chicks’ Emily Robison and Tom Brady.

Birkhead made Smith’s acquaintance at the 2004 edition of the event.

http://www.eonline.com/news/article/index.jsp?uuid=765b4b20-0387-49cc-973c-faaf3183e3f7