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I arrived home one day last week and literally the second I walked in the door my wife said, “You’re chaperoning her field trip next month.” The “her” she was referring to was our oldest daughter who, at that very moment, was screaming bloody murder from her bedroom because her pencil broke in half … or because she had been told to put her slippers on; I honestly can’t remember and also who cares at this point. ANYWAY, it looked like I was chaperoning a field trip I guess! Should be fun, or terrible. I’m leaning toward the latter based on the amount of paperwork I have to fill out in advance. I completed about 12 forms—one of them was a reference form that reminded me I have zero friends; however, it made me smile to think of the school district contacting my current and former coworkers to see if I am fit to walk around a museum in the company of children. My wife dropped these forms off at the school and then they emailed her to say that I had three more forms to complete. ...

The theme for the daddy-daughter dance was “Old Time Hollywood,” so the only question for me was which of my many old time Hollywood wardrobe components to don. The pants and shirt? Or possibly the other pants and shirt? Unfortunately, my top hat was at the cleaners; however, there was some debate about whether that would have been too old time Hollywood anyway. It’s like, are we talking “old time” as in Charlie Chaplin or “old time” as in when Brad Pitt would wear those terrible tinted sunglasses on the red carpet in the late 90s? The point is that I didn’t want to embarrass myself. I settled on a dress shirt, pants and tie. It was similar to what I wore during my old time Hollywood job interview in 2015, or the old time Hollywood Easter Sunday Mass I attended the year prior. Upon arrival, I was surprised at some of the other dads’ interpretations of old time Hollywood fashion. “Just got off work at my tech job and gotta go to this thing” a la Clark Gable circa 1935 was the pref...

Janice was a girl who lived around the block from our house when I was growing up. She was cool, but also a little rough around the edges. She always seemed to be into the bad stuff just a little too soon. One time, I, my sister Jill, and Janice were hanging out in our backyard and playing some game where we were jumping off our picnic table. During one of her jumps, Janice mooned us on her way down and my sister and I had no idea how to react except to later agree in private to not hang out with Janice anymore. I still have the image of Janice’s bare butt imbedded deep into my psyche, and not in a good way because I never thought of Janice like that. (Possibly with good reason. My sister said the last time she saw her, Janice had short, spiked hair and was wearing a sleeveless T-shirt and holding hands with her girlfriend.) A few months later, after avoiding Janice at all costs lest I fall victim to having to see her butt cheeks in midair again, I was walking home from my cousin’...

When she was six months old, our daughter rolled her eyes at my wife. No, I mean it—my wife, while feeding her, tried to convince her an airplane was coming in for landing, and our daughter, unconvinced, straight rolled her eyes. Pffft. Airplane? Really? Cliché much?   It was an apropos action for a girl who was born with the defiant attitude of a 16-year-old. From that point forward, it was clear we were not dealing with your average child. Now at the ripe old age of 4, and able to verbalize pretty much anything, there is nothing you can tell her. In fact, according to her : “I know about everything —God, Jesus, lollipops … people … blood.” Not too much knowledge out there that doesn’t fall under that five-item umbrella, so it’s hard to argue with her. No, literally, it is hard to argue with her. Impossible. Counter-intuitive. Damaging to all involved. It’s become, for us, the most slippery of parental slopes—trying to nurture that independence and intellect wh...

We’re approaching a year since our younger daughter, now 3, arrived to us via foster care. She is pretty much as sweet and kindhearted as they come, and everyone who crosses her path instantly falls in love with her, just as we did 12 months ago. When we were going through the whole process, we were told she had none of the issues typically associated with foster kids. She didn’t hoard, fight, wasn’t defiant, and was meeting all the developmental markers of typical kids. Everyone, including us, seemed equally pleased and shocked by this. Okay, maybe skeptical is a better word than shocked, as far as we were concerned. It might be a stretch to say we’re seasoned veterans of the foster care process, but our experience combined with my wife’s therapy background kept us on the lookout. The food issue was apparent from the beginning. Long story short, our daughter, a victim of neglect as a baby and never sure if or when her next meal would come, obsesses over food. We’re aw...

Hi, everyone. I wrote an essay about our daughter that has been published in the book Dads of Disability: Stories for, by, and about fathers of children who experience disability (and the women who love them!). The essay itself is a reworked, more cohesive, and edited version of the three-part essay that appeared on this blog a while back. It’s called “The Girl with the Trauma Tattoo,” and comprises chapter five. The book as a whole is an amazing collection of essays and poems by and about dads, most of whom experience much more dramatic daily challenges than me, and who are just incredible people. Dads of Disability is available on Kindle and Nook now, and will be released in paperback April 15. You can follow the book's progress via its Facebook page here . I couldn’t more highly recommend this book—regardless of my essay’s inclusion in it—for people facing similar struggles, or for those interested in the everyday hardships and triumphs of raising a child wit...

Last summer my wife told me to submit an application for our oldest daughter to attend a local charter school. I said, “ What ? She is like 3. Pretty sure we have some time.” She said, “Your daughter is 4. And we don’t have a lot of time. There is a waiting list.” “Is this one of those schools where there are yet-to-be-born children on the waiting list?” “Probably.” “Okay I will do it tomorrow. One question.” “What?” “What is a charter school?” My wife delved into some explanation that did not necessarily serve as an answer to my question. So I looked online. According to Wikipedia, “a charter school is an alternative education system where a school receives public funding but operates independently.” So basically … I still don’t know. It sounds like a charter school is a school that has its cake and eats it, too, and also we pay for the cake. Nevertheless, I filled out the application under the impression that the school would prefer a child who came from less than ord...

We were sleeping soundly, my wife and I, one recent weekend morning. It was pitch black, the sun still seemingly hours away from rising. It was a blissful moment of much-needed rest that was interrupted by my wife’s panicked scream. AHHHHHHHHH! I popped my head up fast and, although my eyes were still groggy and adjusting to my surroundings, I immediately saw the source of my wife’s terror. It was a haunting silhouette of a child next to my wife’s side of the bed, her head eerily illuminated by the light coming from the monitor that we keep nearby which looks into the girls’ room. My heart skipped a beat, and for a brief moment I wondered if we were in the middle of some demented, Children of the Corn -esque horror movie. The shadowy child said nothing, but looked on, stoic, undeterred by our panic. Finally she spoke, undoubtedly, I figured, to reveal some demented clue that may help us escape a terrible fate—“Seek the medallion from the evil jester in three midnights or beware, ...

Read part I here ; part II here . Our daughter, DLG1, is beautiful, sweet, smart, funny, active, warm, and extremely outgoing. You could meet her, as many have, and find her to be no different than the average child. Even our extended family often has a difficult time believing that our nurture did not easily overcome her nature. The truth of the matter is that it has not, and never will. We see life through the lens of our own experiences, and because of that it’s nearly impossible to understand, much less relate to, a child who was born not to a mother but to a system that passed her around until God intervened. Even we, her parents who have been there since day … ( counting ) 111, have difficulty with it all. There is an extreme temptation to say, to believe, she’s been with us essentially her entire life, and she doesn’t remember being abandoned; she was just a baby! And even if she did remember anything, it must have been terrible, and life is much better now. Everything is...

For part I click here . My wife’s background as a therapist enabled her to notice things very early on with our daughter that many might have missed. By "many" I mean me and by "might have" I mean did. In fact, the only reason our daughter (daddy’s little girl, DLG1) never received speech therapy is because my wife is a speech therapist, so our daughter has been unconsciously annunciating since she was a baby: I saaaaaid, “Wah, wah.” What can’t you understand about that, father? Now please hand me my bottle before I flip out. DLG1 does, however, currently have three non-speech therapists. Her physical therapist has done wonders with the four-month-old we handed her who could not hold her head up. Not including illegal narcotics, DLG1 did not receive any pre-natal care, which caused her to have the physical strength and stamina of banana pudding. Now she is more athletic than most kids her age, and last year won “a long jumping contest” at school. On those day...

As usual one morning last week, I was only able to complete school drop-off after prying our older daughter off me like a wailing amoeba, and left to a chorus of, “NO DADDY NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!” The phrase kicking and screaming is not usually literal, but that is exactly what our daughter was doing while being held back by several teachers as all the other children, including those much younger than her, looked on with both awe and disdain. As I walked down the hallway to leave, a mom who I kind of know and who was bearing witness to this whole thing looked at me and said, “Don’t you just wish you knew when days like this were coming?” I responded, “Ha, I know when I wake up it’s going to be a day like this.” I expected a normal parent-to-parent response to that, something like, “Tell me about it!” Instead she responded with a somewhat judgmental, “Really?” Well, yeah, REALLY. My wife later said that I probably misread the comment because I was on edge. Perhaps. The previous evening o...

What’s interesting about having another kiddo around is this: I had just, really just reached the point where I felt totally comfortable bringing our daughter pretty much anywhere by myself. Case in point, Easter weekend. My wife became ill that Friday, the same day we had a follow-up doctor’s appointment for our daughter. When it was determined she couldn’t go, I just assumed we’d reschedule because I sure as heck wasn’t going by myself. Well, apparently we had waited like six months for this appointment, so I was told I would be bringing her. Our daughter sees so many developmental specialists, I wasn’t even 100 percent sure what kind of doctor this was, or his name. Hello, Doctor … person. I am the father. Here is the girl. I assume you have a file or something? Here is my phone if you need to call my wife. It’s under “wifey” in contacts. She might not answer because she is terribly ill I mean her ringer is on low so keep calling. I’ll be in the waiting room. Everything ended up...

There’s an old Bill Cosby bit about how you’re not really a parent until you have two kids. I’m not sure I believe that—one child has been enough to make me lose my freakin’ mind—but it appears as though we’re going to at least test the theory. My wife and I are, God-willing, adopting again. It will be a very different situation than what transpired with our first little one, who we had in our care at three months old. This little girl—another girl; it’s just me and the dog at this point—is already 2 ½ years old. With personality by the truckload. We were chosen to be this girl’s adoptive family because her case manager came across our file in the system and apparently saw something she liked. I’ve not been made aware of exactly what that was, but it probably had something do with my expertise in writing drawn-out exposes about spam emails and my frustration with the DVR . Surely he can impart that wisdom on this impressionable little girl! That, or the fact my wife is a child ...

I picked my daughter up at school last week and the first thing I saw was a note attached to her file. As you may recall , these notes are almost always bad news. A paper in the file means a) your daughter hit someone, so please sign in case we get sued, b) your daughter fell off the slide on her head and now has a bruised forehead, please sign so you don’t sue us, or c) our rates are going up, please sign and pay us now (also, your daughter hit someone, please sign the second line). This note, however, was different. I opened it to reveal the words, “Dear Mr. Kenny, Congratulations! Your family has been selected as our Family of the Month!” This was very exciting. Our family has never been selected as anything of the month before. It has been a struggle to get along in life without ever being formally acknowledged as better than other families. In fact, whenever our residential development hosts some seasonal function and are there taking pictures, I always fantasize that our fami...

Before the holidays we took our daughter to see “Annie” at Arizona Broadway Theatre. It has been nothing but Annie ever since. It was my wife’s idea, and admittedly it seemed like a good one at the time. After all, “Annie” is a timeless story, and considering our daughter is adopted, we knew it would strike a chord with us as well. It got a little misty in there watching my daughter watch Annie find her forever home. Now I want to cry for different reasons. It was her first show and she barely made it through. It was a huge risk to take a 3-year-old to something that has an intermission, but she somehow pulled it off, even if she could barely keep her eyes open at the end. Because of that, we rushed out of the theater and inadvertently became the first patrons to meet the cast. Yes, immediately after the show our daughter met Annie herself. It was the best and worst thing that has ever happened. There is not enough Annie in the world to appease her. She knows all the songs and si...

We’re beginning to teach our daughter the important lesson of being fearful of everyone. This is a slippery slope for all parents, and it definitely has been for us because our daughter is extraordinarily extroverted. You know how sometimes you are required to talk to a child who is not your own? I have tried that before and it is usually very unsuccessful. The child rarely responds to my inane question or comment and instead stares at me like I am the villain of a recently-viewed cartoon and then cowers behind the leg of a nearby, trusted adult. It is a very uplifting experience. Our daughter is not like that, which makes me both proud and scared. She will ask a stranger in a grocery store existential questions—“S’cuse me why you be like that?”—from the seat of a shopping cart-car hybrid vehicle before that stranger even knows she is there. She also has a sixth sense for soliciting strangers who so obviously do not want to be bothered. If you are 96 years old and walking around...

Face Time is a built-in app on the iPhone whereby one can video chat with a fellow iPhone user. It’s possible we use this feature more frequently than the regular ol’ phone audio because our respective parents would prefer to see their granddaughter rather than just hear her. They couldn’t care less about us, honestly. I don’t even make an appearance in the majority of our Face Time sessions, and spend most of them shirtless while washing dishes. (I am usually close to naked around the house. I am always hot here.) These calls offer varying degrees of success, and by that I mean they are almost always unsuccessful. For example, we attempted to Face Time with my dad last week and it kept freezing. When this happens, it typically freeze-frames on your worst possible expression. So our daughter became frustrated that Pop was not answering her and confused as to why his funny face was stuck. At least with my parents, we can quickly come to a mutual decision that it isn’t working and end ...