The Journal

My Angel

January 15th, 2009

Today, I want to write about my daughter. Her name is Amelia, but we call her Amy. She's 5 years old; turns 6 on September 16th. She, along with my wife, is the love of my life.

My wife and I had her when we were very young, at the age of 19. Completely unplanned pregnancy, but a loved baby since the very beginning. We were scared to death, being that we were kids ourselves, and we had no clue how to raise a baby, but we just embraced it as a blessing.

It hasn't been easy, though. At age 2, Amy was diagnosed with PDD-NOS (Pervasive Developmental Disorder- Not Otherwise Specified), which, according to some health professionals, would put her somewhere in the Autism Spectrum, but we're really in some kind of neurological limbo. She is impaired to make friends with her peers, she never begins a conversation (and won't even look at you straight into your eyes if she doesn't know you), and she is obsessed with organizing and counting stuff. Now, some of you might think that the last one is not that bad (probably because your kid's bedroom looks like a war zone), but try giving her Frosted Flakes for breakfast, right before going to school. She will count every flake in her bowl, to then put exactly eight flakes in her spoon, every time she takes it into her mouth to eat. Needless to say, we don't eat corn flakes anymore.

But, besides all that, she's just as normal as any other child her age, and we treat her as such. She loves playing with her Lego for hours. She takes all her cups, where she organizes all the pieces by color and size, counts all the pieces in them, and then make all sorts of stuff: a red house with a green roof, a blue car, a yellow tree. Her learning abilities are quite normal, but she can't work well in a regular environment, so she attends a special school for children with similar kinds of ''disorders''. Even the word is so inappropriate, when Amy is so obsessively organized.

It may be father's pride talking, but she's the most beautiful girl in the world. She's picking up on ballet. Her mom and I taught her how to read and write. She does it at her own pace, which is perfect. I'm honored by the fact that she calls me dad.