Eddie Murphy’s annual family vacation in Hawaii is always the same: just a little R&R for the actor and his five children, ages 4 to 16, at his favorite $10,700-a-night luxury suite at Maui’s Four Seasons Hotel. 

Except this year, he brought along someone new who’s been spending a lot of time with him lately: singer Melanie Brown – also known to ’90s pop fans as Scary Spice of the Spice Girls – and her 7-year-old daughter Phoenix Chi.

Napoleon Dynamite star Jon Heder and his wife, Kirsten, are expecting their first child, the actor’s rep has confirmed. 

Heder, 28, who stars in the upcoming School for Scoundrels, first alluded to the good news during a Hollywood Foreign Press news conference at the Four Seasons in Beverly Hills on Thursday.

Heder, who is from Salem, Ore., burst onto the scene playing the memorable oddball Napoleon Dynamite in the 2004 film. He has also starred in Just Like Heaven and Bench Warmers.

Amanda Peet, 34, and her fiancé, screenwritter David Benioff, are expecting their first baby.
 
“She’s almost 12 weeks along. She’s thrilled,” says the source, who adds the two will tie the knot this month in New York City. The couple have been engaged since July 2005. A rep for Peet could not be reached for comment. No word on whether the pregnancy will be written into Peet’s new NBC series Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip.
 
Benioff’s screenwriting credits include 25th Hour, Troy, and a forthcoming adaptation of the bestselling novel The Kite Runner. Peet has starred in such films as The Whole Nine Yards and A Lot Like Love.

Grey’s Anatomy star Patrick Dempsey and his wife, Jillian Fink, are expecting their second child, his publicist, Leslie Sloane Zelnik, tells the Associated Press.

The couple have a 4-year-old daughter, Tallulah Fyfe.

Fink and Dempsey, 40, met in 1994 when she he came into her salon for a haircut. They wed in 1999 at the actor’s family’s farmhouse in Maine.

Whitney Houston has split from her husband, Bobby Brown, Houston’s rep, Nancy Seltzer. 

“She has filed for divorce from Bobby Brown,” says Seltzer.

Houston filed the paperwork Friday, Sept. 8 in Orange County, Calif.

The filing is technically a legal separation, Seltzer clarified, adding: “We’re saying she filed for divorce because that is (Whitney’s) intent.” Divorce proceeding are expected to begin next month.

“(Whitney) was in L.A. last night with Clive Davis at the Ella awards,” Seltzer says. “I have nothing further to add.”

Britney Spears and Kevin Federline have welcomed their second son together, a source close the family has confirmed. 

The baby boy, who was born just before 2 a.m. Tuesday at a Los Angeles hospital, was delivered via a scheduled C-section.

“Kevin had a smile on his face. He looked happy and upbeat,” says an observer.

The whole thing, says a source, was smooth – just as the mom-to-be had predicted to us back in August, saying childbirth “will be a piece of cake.”

Anna Nicole Smith is too overcome by grief to even talk about the cause of her 20-year-old son Daniel’s death Sunday, just three days after she gave birth to a baby girl, those close to the situation said Tuesday.

New York City-based TrimSpa CEO Alex Goen, for whose product Smith is a spokesperson, told CNN’s Larry King that he had spoken to Smith only two hours before the broadcast. In their conversation, which lasted between 45 minutes and a hour, Goen said the distraught mother was “only coherent for about five minutes.”

At the Toronto Film Festival premiere of Jennifer Lopez and Marc Anthony’s movie El Cantante Tuesday, Anthony explained why he and his wife work so well together both onscreen and off: “Just simple love,” he said. 

Lopez proved it when she walked across the stage and kissed her husband on the lips before introducing the biopic of salsa legend Hector Lavoe, which she and Anthony star in and coproduced.