Prayerfully, our new children will be arriving soon! Though they are eager to move to California and “see the ocean”, we know that reality will set it and moving so many states away will be difficult.

My biological son has already gone through something similar. When we made the decision to adopt, it became clear that adopting siblings would mean a move for our family. Though my son really wanted sibs, he really did not want to move. He made that supreme sacrifice because of his love for them, but clearly it was extremely hard for him.

One... more

While devouring everything I can about adoption, I came across a wonderful cross-section of articles on what seems like the “Never-Ending Wait.” What is so great about these articles is that they address the fact that:

• Others have “Been There, Done That”

• Children arrived and everyone lived to tell about “The Wait”

So, while you are waiting, you can read about waiting! Many of the articles offer wonderful suggestions on how to manage the wait time. I hope you find them beneficial during your wait time!

While You Wait: A fabulous listing of many, many articles written by those “in the... more

Tana just posted on the value of mentoring – and I totally agree. One of the items on my list of things to do while waiting (that I have been covering one or two at a time!) is to “Find an adoption "mentor" who's "been there, done that" and learn from them”. In birth language, I would tell you to find a doula or a midwife.... more

This evening I started poking around Verkhovna Rada's web site. Bill 2562's information has been updated.

I would love for someone to tell me that I am wrong. Someone please tell me that I am wrong. But I believe this bill has become law. The key phrase is the following.

Останній етап: Закон... more

If anyone in the Bible knew anything about patience, it would be Job. Job not only waited adversity out and won the victory through God, but lost just about everything that would matter in this human life in the process.

He lost his health, his children, and the respect of his wife and friends. His wife told him just to “curse God and die” (Job 2:9). Yet this same verse tells us that Job “held fast [to] his integrity.”

To really understand this story in context, it’s crucial we understand where all this adversity came from. Many... more

We’re home. We’ve settled back into our daily routine. Though the holiday threw our internal calendars off kilter a bit, we’ve still been homeschooling and going about our “normal” routines.

But, it just doesn’t feel the same.

Our foster mom said that she’s planning on keeping the kids busy to divert them … I feel like I need the same! We can’t reach the kids by phone due to their increased activity schedule and the time difference, and it feels weird. Even though we only used to call once per week, it feels like we should talk to them more now, so they know that we were serious about adopting them and don’t feel as though we are abandoning them. It’s kind of like waiting... more

In the early 1990s, along with the influx of Romanian adoptees into the U.S. came the term “institutional autism.” Dr. Ron Federici, a neuropsychologist was instrumental in using this term to describe children from Romanian orphanages who exhibited autistic-like behaviors that seem to have resulted from the deprivation and isolation associated with living in an institution.

For some in the world of international adoption, institutional autism was a welcome way of describing the phenomenon they were observing... more

This is a picture of two of my daughters, Marie and Esther. I've posted it before on the( "How to Tie A Baby Wrap" blog), but I love it. It shows me how much Marie loves being a big sister.

She's 17 now and "cool". She spends time in lots of normal teenage pursuits - a job at a pizza place, sleeping in, putting together cute (and modest!) outfits - even having a boyfriend (currently in Africa, but will be here in a month.)

She tries to convince me that she's... more

In the world of special needs moms, psychiatrist is sometimes a dirty word. It conjures up images of egomanics who won’t listen to knowledgeable parents and totally misunderstand our children’s disorders…and continue to tinker and tinker with the medications and dosages.

LuLu has been seeing her psychiatrist for the last four years…and our experience couldn’t be more positive. I know, because others tell me all the time, just how lucky we are. We saw LuLu’s psychiatrist today. She is such a dear. She listened to me and to LuLu before making the obvious... more

This is a question that is still being asked all the time on the adoption.com forums. Just about every family who is beginning to look into stepparent adoption wonders if they truly do need to spend so much money on a lawyer, or if they should just file the paperwork and attempt to do the legal process without the aide of an attorney. Some states give you the option of hiring an attorney for a stepparent adoption, while other states simply take the question out of the... more