(Please remember that this is just a piece of my definition of adoption. For my full definition of what adoption is, you can read this whole series of posts here.)

Adoption is hard. To illustrate my point, here is a letter I wrote to myself last week during an extra-hard day of waiting (and waiting).

Dear Erin,

This is a letter to remind yourself later on down the road (when you will need reminding), that you do not enjoy being in the process of adopting (even though an overwhelming amount of evidence would show otherwise).

You do not enjoy the sick feeling in your stomach that you get early... more

We had our second and final post-adoptive placement appointment yesterday. The visit went exceptionally well.

For those of you who may be wondering what types of concerns are covered in a post-adoptive visit, I’ll cover them briefly (although if you survived the homestudy, you’ll be just fine!):

Children: * General physical health (gaining in height and weight; overall good health; whether or not there have been any medical issues, or if the child has special medical needs, what the prognosis is/how things are going. * Mental heath: If there are any mental health issues, the caseworker... more

We got some long awaited news today! Our court date for Solomon Tsega's adoption is December 21, which means that if all goes well, on December 21 he will officially be our son, and we will have definite travel dates assigned at that point for some time in January.

Our case was submitted to court back on November 7 and our agency thought our court date would be a little bit sooner than it is, but the Ethiopian courts have been backed up and moving fairly slowly since they reopened in October from the two-month rainy season closure. Many families have been experiencing... more

What is a legal risk child? This is a child who is in foster care currently and the goal is adoption, but the parental rights have not been terminated yet.

In some states all children available for adoption are considered legal risk. They do not terminate the parental rights on a child until an adoptive home has been found. In other states the parental rights are terminated whether there is a pre-adoptive placement available or not.

What does this mean to adoptive parents? It means that there is a chance, or a risk, that the parental rights will not be terminated... more

OMG. After I stopped crying, I had to sit down and tell my readers how incredibly validating Nancy Spoolstra’s interview today on Kansas City’s Channel 4 was, concerning the Stocklaufer family and others like them. Just to hear the truth at the heart of all adoption trauma and loss, really made me... more

My pictures don’t match my posts in that I may write about one child but show the picture of another. Often I don’t name the child, I’ll give their age as an indicator of the maturity level I should be dealing with, but sometimes I’m talking about their age back then, blurring the lines but protecting their privacy. I'm not talking about my son-in-law pictured here, he's an extremely successful man.

Some of my grown kids are finding out that all the things I dogged them about as teenagers have come to pass.

“I told y’all it was a cold, cruel world out there,” is my favorite... more

I’ve recently had my daughter and her five children move in with us while her husband returns to El Salvador to work on his residency papers. For the last seven years they have lived a mile from us, so my grandchildren are completely comfortable here. Several of my older sons have moved out, now in their late teens and early twenties, and a friend from church sent a crew to renovate an upstairs area that now holds my daughter plus her 12, 10, 8, and 3 year olds and their new baby.

Fortunately her kids didn’t have to change schools or bus routes, their family... more

After you have completed steps one through five (see below for links) in the Viet Nam adoption process, you will begin to compile your dossier. Most adoption agencies will advise you to hold off on collecting documents for your dossier as many have expiration dates. Getting documents too early could force you to start over again on them if they do expire; this causes much more of a headache and financial strain than you need this far into the process.

A dossier is the set of documents that will be sent to Viet Nam and essentially be your family’s file for your adoption in country.... more

Beth and I fluffed up and headed downtown for my television interview this morning, and Dora started her day a little earlier by hanging out with a neighbor. For someone who used to wear mascara to go do middle-of-the-night colic checks while in vet school (least anyone see me with “no eyes”), I have come a long way, baby! Putting make-up on these days is a real chore. But I managed …

The interview went well, I think, but you can form your own opinion by checking... more

The Catholic religion has a tradition of lighting candles for people in need and saying a prayer for them. Even though I was raised in the Catholic church, I never really understood the tradition, so I researched it.

The candle is meant to serve as a “vigil” for the person they are praying for, much as a community holds a candle light vigil for a senseless tragedy in their community.

There are thousands of children in foster care who could stand to have someone hold a vigil for them, but that’s pretty impractical. But, you can light a candle for the child. If... more