With the exception of my Thursday blog about Ella, last week I was the voice of doom. Of course I was keeping my readers up to date on the situation in Guatemala, but I was also ignoring the fact that wonderful things are happening simultaneously. All I needed to do was go searching on several Guatemalan adoption blogs to find them.

For example, people continue to make successful visit trips to Guatemala without incident. Smiling faces and hugs... more

A few weeks ago we received word that LuLu tested positive for Pyroluria. Because LuLu’s biomedical test results are often unexpected, and sometimes mixed (leaving even the most veteran doctors a bit baffled because she doesn’t fit any usual patterns), I was almost happy to get the result that showed she was clearly Pyroluric.

What is Pyroluria? As I blogged about before, it is an extreme vitamin B6 deficiency in which too many kryptopyrrole... more

Lately I’ve been finding benefits from taking 5HTP (5-hydroxytryptophan). I was contacted by a fellow adoptive mom who has done extensive research on biomedical alternatives for her children about a study showing 5HTP as being helpful for weight loss in women. This study was of obese women who lost significant weight by taking high doses of 5HTP.

As my middle age, stress-related pudge was continuing to grow, I was intrigued.... more

Yesterday's blog about women's suffrage in honor of the day American women were granted the right to vote started me pondering ... in true geezer fashion ... on all that has been hard-fought, but eventually deemed too inconsequential to bother about.

In 2004, for example, 61% of eligible women voters actually... more

One of the things about my family is that some of them are adopted. It's only one thing, and I'm thinking more and more lately that dwelling on "adopted-ness" isn't really terribly constructive. I'm reminded, in fact, of the passage from Borges listing categories of animals (taken, as I had completely forgotten until looking it up just now, from a notional ancient Chinese encyclopedia). The question posed by that list is, "Why those qualities? What does 'looking like flies at a distance'... more

From Adoption 101: How to Adopt a Child:

13. Obtain birth certificate and social security card for the child.

Once your adoption is finalized, you need to get an amended birth certificate and social security card for your child. After you have these two items, then your adoption paperwork is completed. Hooray!

Birth Certificate

The amended birth certificate... more

We all like to think about the warm fuzzy part of parenting while we are waiting to be chosen to adopt. If your chosen child is an infant, there will be lots of snuggle time before you need to think about discipline. If your chosen child is older, then you will need to think about discipline immediately, and how to do it.

Is discipline really necessary, and if it is, Why? The Bible is full of parenting advice for us to consider.

Proverbs 3:11 My son, do not despise the Lord's discipline and do not... more

The first sibling group that we adopted was two sisters who also had an older sister placed with an aunt. It was almost 12 years ago that our daughters came to live in our home. Now our adopted daughters are all grown up, and the older of the two sisters has two children. That’s right we are now proud grandparents.

Yesterday, our oldest granddaughter turned two years old. There was quite a gathering at our older daughter’s house for the birthday party. You see we maintained an open relationship with our daughters’... more

One of the most controversial areas of adoption is the decision of whether to tell an adopted child that he was conceived as the product of rape or incest. Many people feel very strongly one way or the other, and each side of this issue makes some very good points. I do not have the answers for whether it is better for an adopted child to know this information about his beginnings. However, I can offer you a discussion about both sides of the issue and then let you draw your own conclusions.

I have combined the... more

As this week begins, we're now in the midst of part two of ... more