Not really. It’s just a joke. I am actually their biological father.

The issue is, none of them look like me. Sometimes I get a kind, “Oh I saw this one picture of *enter one of their names here* and with the sun hitting their face and their face all scrunched up they look just like you!”

Thanks, but you’re a liar. A big…fat…liar.

It’s okay.

I admit, when my first born was a baby until the time he was about three it was a definite sore spot to know your child doesn’t resemble you.

Maybe it’s a father thing. Maybe it’s just me (probably).

Going to my in-laws house when he was young was a trip. Nothing like hearing from every one of my wife’s family and their friends, “OH MY GOD HE LOOKS JUST LIKE TOM!”

Tom is my wife’s father. Always been good to me, but I just didn’t want to keep hearing how much my son didn’t look like me. It started out as an annoyance and ended up in me just leaving the room whenever it came up.

It wasn’t their fault and I wasn’t mad at any of them for thinking it, it was the truth.

Don’t worry, I am over it.

I don’t know why it bothered me so much. It just…did.

Was it wrong of me to feel that way? I don’t know, probably yes. It was just a selfish feeling of wanting my kid (now kids) to look like me.

Maybe I just remember growing up and hearing how much I looked like my father and how I felt pride in that. I did look like him. So does my brother. A lot of people to this day think my brother and I are twins (we’re not, I’m fifteen months older thank you very much).

I’ve been stopped on the street by someone that hadn’t seen my father since they were just out of high school and he asked me, “Do you know someone named Kelly King?”

“Yeah, he’s my father.”

“No shit, you look just like him!”

Really I’m just being dramatic. The little monsters are only 7 and (almost) 3. There’s so much more growing and changing for them to go through.

Maybe they will all end up looking like me, but I’ll just settle for one!