Thomas Ritzman and his daughter have the same full smiles and gesture very similarly when they talk, but Ritzman is 90 years old and Eleanor is 8.

While on the living room sofa of a friend's house in Concord yesterday, Ritzman patted his daughter's hip with his wrinkly hand as she slid down his lap with her "blankie"firmly in her small hands.

People usually think the young girl with blonde hair and bright blue eyes is his granddaughter, or worse, his great-granddaughter.

"I hate that," Ritzman said.

Ritzman is loving parenthood, however.

When Eleanor was born, the family made national news. Since then, there's been the occasional

finger pointing, whispers and surprised reactions. Others who know the family well say it's a wonderful dynamic between this 90-year-old husband, his 46-year-old wife, Hannah, and 8-year-old daughter.

Before Eleanor, it had been awhile since Ritzman last raised a child.

Ritzman had three children with his first wife. His oldest son is 62, another son is 57 and a daughter is 58.

Ritzman married Hannah 13 years ago, and Eleanor was born a few years later. Besides age, the big difference between raising the first crop of children and Eleanor is that now Ritzman is very involved.

Hannah works as an operating room nurse, and Ritzman is the stay-at-home-dad.

After getting up at 5 a.m., Ritzman and Eleanor select which clothes she will wear, then they prepare and eat breakfast. Eleanor says goodbye to her mother the same way every morning, with 10 kisses and 10 hugs. Father and daughter might watch a little TV, and then Eleanor heads off to school. Included in that routine is Eleanor's "screeching" when she discovers an article of clothing that she wants to wear is missing, which happens from time to time.

"The mind is so powerful. Age is a matter of concept," Ritzman said. "If you think life is a certain way with people in their 50s, then that's what you're going to turn into when you're that age. If you think people who are 90 walk with a cane, then that's what you'll do."

Ritzman doesn't walk with a cane, nor does he even move slowly. He navigated around both children and children's toys yesterday with the instinct of a father 60 years younger.

After World War II, Ritzman worked as an obstetrician-gynecologist for 35 years at his practice on Warren Street. He was the first American Board Certified Ob-Gyn in the city, he said. Ritzman then spent the next 20 years practicing medical hypno-analysis, in which he would uncover traumatic experiences in the subconscious of a patient through hypnosis.

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