WASHINGTON (AP) — A teenager now lives at the White
House.
Malia Obama, the eldest of President Barack Obama's
two daughters, turned 13 on the Fourth of July.
As usual, she was sharing her parents with hundreds
of others on her special day.
Obama and first lady Michelle Obama invited
hundreds of troops and their families from across the country to attend a
special barbecue and USO concert on the South Lawn. There they will have one of
the best views of the annual fireworks show on the National Mall.
Malia's birthday has been a source of angst for the
president, whose recent public comments on that milestone have ranged from fear
of what lies ahead to acceptance that daddy's little girl is, well, growing up.
Obama recently told a television interviewer that
Malia and her sister Sasha, 10, are kind, respectful, responsible and
well-behaved.
"I could not ask for better kids," he
said. "I'm not anticipating complete mayhem for the next four, five years.
But I understand teenage-hood is complicated."
At a re-election campaign fundraiser in New York
City last month featuring "Sister Act" star Whoopi Goldberg, Obama
joked that the 1992 movie helped him figure out where to send his daughters. In
the flick, Goldberg plays a Reno, Nev., lounge singer who is hidden in a
convent and disguised as a nun under the witness protection program after
seeing a murder.
"They're getting a little too old and too
cute," Obama said of Malia and Sasha.
A few weeks earlier after he toured a Chrysler plant
in Ohio and watched as workers put the finishing touches on a Wrangler, Obama
opined that the off-road vehicle symbolizes "freedom, adventure, hitting
the open road, never looking back — which is why Malia and Sasha will never buy
one. Until maybe they're 35. I don't want any adventure for them."
But Obama, who is approaching a milestone birthday
of his own — he turns 50 on Aug. 4 — also has seemed accepting of the
inevitable. At a news conference last Wednesday at the White House, the
president twice said Malia was 13.
That was five days before her actual birthday.
Copyright
2011 The Associated Press.
(AP
Photo/Carolyn Kaster)
