As the Christmas holidays are drawing closer, I find myself thinking of what I will get Charlie for Christmas this year. Each year, when I talk to A. on Thanksgiving I ask her what Charlie and N want for Christmas. I make notes and I look for the things they have on their “want list”. I usually get them each a couple of small things and then of course, the ornament I give them each year which has become a tradition.

This year, I find myself wanting to buy so much stuff for Charlie. I see things everywhere that remind me of him and that are things that A. mentioned he wanted... more

Today was my middle daughter’s therapy appointment, although as it turned out, the conversation seemed to gravitate to more about how well I , her mom, am dealing (or not dealing) with everything. I freely admit that I am often a mess, and still at times emotionally challenged by many of my own issues from childhood. This fact frequently comes through in many of our sessions, and even though she is a new therapist for us, she is quickly catching on to me.

The new therapist is a great lady. For some strange reason she makes me think of Nancy... more

While my adopted stepson's attitude towards the end of the year holiday season has finally changed and he is now able to enjoy this time of the year, for many years we had to steer clear of many of the typical holiday activities that we had at one point enjoyed together as a family. The celebrations, the emphasis on family togetherness, they were all too much for him to handle and like many older adopted children he would act out negatively just prior to the holiday season, and it wouldn't really stop until after all of the festivities were done and over with.

There are several things that we have done in the past to help my adopted stepson with the Christmas season so that it was... more

Faith over on the Adoptive Parenting Blog wrote an interesting post today on a topic that is rarely talked about in adoption circles. Her post is titled "Raising a Less Physically Attractive Adopted Child".

In a nutshell, Faith points out that not all children are "magazine cover" beautiful, and yet at the same time, all children are truly beautiful. However, in the shallow world in which we live in, many people value physical beauty as a highly important... more

First of all, let me preface this blog with the statement that to my knowledge there are no studies that verify or even suggest that Guatemalan born children as a group are more prone to language delays. Secondly, I’ve heard of several Guatemalan children that have no delays at all – on the contrary they spoke early and well.

But because this was an issue in Ella’s development and it keeps coming up in emails from readers, I’ve blogged about it several times before. My first blog covers the subject of delays and particularly in internationally born children. My ... more

With my own birthday over with and Thanksgiving behind us as well, it is still only the beginning of the busiest part of the year for us. We have several more birthday's crammed into the end of the year, along with the rest of the holiday celebrations. However the birthday that we have been having the most fun planning this far is that of my adopted stepsons.

This is a big year for him. Not only has it been a year of tremendous progress for him both at school as well as at home, but age... more

My friend Nancy over on the Reactive Attachment Disorder blog has my wheels turning. Recently her two older adopted children have publicly questioned (on her blog) her decisions to talk the challenges of parenting them. Nancy’s probably the most straight-forward person you’ll ever meet. We tease Super Dad that he’s incredibly blunt, but Nancy could give him a run for his money.

One of the things that Nancy and I see eye-to-eye on is that Nancy is a truth teller. (This is not to imply that others do not tell the truth.) What I mean is that Nancy believes telling the truth, for truth’s sake, is important. Guess... more

In a little less than two weeks, I am slated to give a presentation to the Northwest Georgia Foster & Adoptive Parent Association as part of their first “mini-conference”. I’m honored to be invited. I met their leaders at this year’s NACAC conference, where the Attachment & Trauma Network (ATN) was exhibiting. They extended the invitation to speak because their membership has expressed such concern and interest in attachment issues and attachment disorder.

I’m not surprised by this, as attachment issues are common among many adoptive and foster children. Although most won’t... more

My folks left this morning … I had them at the airport two hours before their flight! The older they get (they are 84 and nearly 84) the more stressed they get about missing their flight. Our local airport is the easiest place ever to go in and out of, so no doubt they sat there for an hour and 45 minutes … but they were happy! We had a fabulous time and as I hugged them good-bye, I was so thankful for another holiday to share with them.

I picked up Dora’s Penney’s pictures on the way home from the airport. When I showed her the 8 X 10, she said, “My eyes look sad.” Yes, they do. We picked out a pose with... more

This is the hardest time of the year for me to accept that my little guy is color blind.

Thanks to some sharp-eyed observations from one of his teachers, I suspected pretty soon after he came home from Sakhalin Island in October 2005 that he wasn't seeing colors the way the rest of us did. He was overtly fond of yellow--had to have yellow sneakers, yellow boots, a yellow Polartec--but lots of little kids love yellow. Subsequent testing by the two most fabulous pediatric ophthalmologists on the planet has confirmed that he is red-green color blind, the form of color blindness... more