He was so tiny, fragile and unhealthy. Today he is so much bigger, healthier and I can’t think of any part of him that isn’t tough and sturdy.

This summer while shopping at the grocery store and to my surprise I found a red chair. Of course I HAD to purchase it. Today I HAD to take a picture of my little man in the red chair.

Paul is one of the most precious things in my life. I am amazed when I think of how much he has grown and changed in these 3 short years. Seems like I have known him so much longer than just 3 years, like he was always one of us.

The book is set in 1962 in Jackson, Mississippi, just 7 years after Rosa wouldn’t get off a bus and one year before the Woolworth Sit-in. While I was reading it I was amazed at how far we have come in 50 years. How very far we are from a day where separate everything was acceptable to a place where my son is free to be who he wants.

I knew from my Grandmother, who had a Black nanny growing up, how much these children adored those women. She would reminisce often about her as though she was part of her family. I remember when I told my Grandmother that we were adopting from Ethiopia and she was amazed that there would be a person of color in our family. She wasn’t amazed in a bad way, she too was in awe of how things had changed.

The day Paul fell asleep in my arms at the beach I had time to contemplate this book. Here I was, a white woman, sitting on a beach holding my son, who is black, in perfect harmony. Nobody was treating us poorly. My son didn’t have to use different facilities or drink from different drinking fountains. He was treated equally.

I was stunned. I couldn’t imagine 50 years prior.

I would love to believe that I would have stood for what was right if I had been alive 50 years ago. I would have hoped that I would have had the courage to be a Skeeter and not a Hilly.

The Civil Rights Leaders literally put their lives on the line to fight for what they thought was right. Many died in the effort. Would I had been brave enough to do what was right? Or would I had just gone along with what was going on to be safe?

Certainly a wonderful read and I really enjoyed the book.

Friends said that while Po, the main character does go on a journey to find out “who he really is” that in the end he figures out that his Dad is the man he always knew and loved and that is his “real” family. It seemed harmless so we decided to go see it.

Paul is so young that he is oblivious to the facts of adoption. He knows he was born in Ethiopian. He knows Mommy and Daddy came to pick him up and bring him home. This is all his three year old mind can handle. He doesn’t have a memory he can recall that doesn’t have us in it.

Kimberly on the other hand has begun to really think about her beginnings. She has no memory of the womb she spent time in and all her memories begin with us. She knows her story. She knows we were there the moment she “popped out”. So honestly I was more worried how the movie would effect her processing.

The kids did very well with the movie. They do know their stories. Adoption isn’t a secret around our house. They know the story of how they were brought into our family just as Annie and Madeline do. The stories include all the parts a child can handle or understand. Annie and Mimi don’t know any details of how they were conceived because they aren’t old enough to handle that information. We use the same discretion in the details of Paul and Kimberly’s adoptions. There are things they won’t be able to understand until older.

What I wasn’t prepared for in the movie was how it would impact me. I sat there watching the movie and heard the Father Goose tell Po how he was found in the radish basket and how he loved him and kept him as a son. Paul’s story slammed me in the face. Paul was found. He was there and no beginning before that is known. Tears streamed down my face.

Later in the movie Po sees a image in a warrior from the village he was born. Po has a flashback to a big panda face kissing him and running off. At this point I was crying. Is this what happened to my Paul? How did she leave him? How did she know that he would one day find us and that he would thrive? Was she even there or did someone else do it for her? What happened that day?

This is one of those things in life that if you spend too much time on, you can really impact your current life. I wouldn’t say that I push these thoughts from my mind but in order to live my life I can’t relive all the painful parts of it daily. Not knowing what happened that day and the ones before it in Paul’s life fall into this category. I wish I knew. I wish I could tell him. I pray that he will be able to move forward as Po did and know that we love him more than he can comprehend. To know that we are his family and that while his story had a tragic beginning it has a happy ending.

When I watched Father Goose watch Po go off in search of himself I thought of the day we will tell Paul and Kimberly the hard facts of their lives. A day I know one day I will face. I wish there were a way for me to take the pain that they will face that day.

This movie, in my opinion, is adoption friendly enough. While my friends were correct on the impact it would have on my children they didn’t know how it would effect me. Just like I will never fully understand the heart of an adopted child because I will never be one, my friends who have never adopted can’t understand my feelings towards adoption. It was a good movie, I just wasn’t prepared for the emotional drain that would occur.

We are wandering around Sea World and Paul is being a typical 3 year old. I have finally had enough of his antics and am sending Bill to the van to get the stroller so he can be contained for a while. He continues to act us so I sit him down on a curb near the dolphins so that his sisters are amused and he can’t see the dolphins.

He is sitting there with his best “I am a poor little orphan” face on. I am not facing him because if I do he will talk to me or use his expressive eyebrows to speak to me. I can see him out of the corner of my eye and have a eye on him and the girls.

A man walks by and kneels down to Paul to ask if he is lost. He wants to know if he can’t find his mother. Paul starts chatting with the man and I interject. I say “nope, he’s not lost he is just in time out.” Paul agrees that I am his mother and the man looks me over and slowly walks away saying, “oh”.

You want to know the kicker in this whole entire interaction. The man has a wife who is of some sort of Asian decent. The child he was pushing in his stroller was clearly her son, perhaps his but I am not sure. Seriously!

The Girls asked why the man was talking to Paul and I told them that he thought he was lost. They said, “I wonder why he would have thought that.” Ahh my sweet innocent babies. I am saddened by this man and his attempt to break that innocence in my kids. Thankfully this time it didn’t work.

I would love to say that this was the first time that this has happened but it wasn’t. This happens a lot.

This family is raising funds to bring their son home from Uganda. If you look in their left side bar you will see this photo. Directly under it is a button to buy one for your tree.

Adoption is amazing. Be part of this family’s miracle.

Birthday’s are a special time. They celebrate the life that has been lived for a year and cumulatively all the years prior. For Paul knowing that his birthdate has been moved means that he wasn’t in our arms on his first birthday. It doesn’t change anything really just brings a sigh of sadness that we missed the inital one and the first one.

We ended up chosing the date of the 9th for Paul because it was the date they chose in Ethiopia, even though they thought December was the right month. We wanted to honor that date choice as part of his heritage.

So we will try to find time soon to celebrate Paul and the fact that he is now 3. This weekend is his cousins birthday and in a couple weeks is my birthday, but we will find time to have a proper birthday and have our boy blow out his candles. He has had so much life and it cetainly needs celebrating.

Are you missing a piece?

This video was created by a friend who wanted to promote adoption. Often adoptive parents are seen as special people, and while adoption is a very special thing you don’t have to be special to adopt.

*Right around the 6 minute mark you will see a very special family that was blessed abundantly by adoption.

I was so excited when she told the adoption community that her court date was November 17, 2009. Not as excited as if she had said her date meeting her chid was that date but excited nonetheless. (She got her referral before the court closure and has waited a very long time to get to this point.)

You may not remember but November 17, 2008 was Paul’s adoption hearing in Ethiopia. It was favorable and I am praying for the same outcome for Missy and all the other families that have court tonight. Please say a prayer for these families that they will have favorable court dates and that they will be able to get speedy embassy dates to bring their babies home.

When I think back to where I was a year ago today tears well in my eyes. I couldn’t be there to know what the outcome of the court hearing was, and I ended up having to wait an additional day to find out. I re-read the posts from last year at this time the other night. It was a teary night remembering how much it hurt to not know him yet.

Hopefully it is just one more day for Missy and all the other families. Hopefully they will find out they have another child tomorrow.

Life is an amazing journey. For some reason I always felt I would adopt. Even as a young girl I dreamed of it. Adoption is one of those times in life where you really feel God moving in your life. (You can feel free to substitute God with the universe/fate or whatever floats your boat. For me it is God but I know it isn’t for everyone.) It was like that seed was planted deep inside of me and would grow when the time was right.

For me the time was right when infertility seemed like a road of no hope. Learning that no matter how hard I tried and how much I wanted to have a child that it was most likely out of my realm was hard. At that moment that seed began to sprout and grow. It insisted that we tell everyone and anyone that we were looking to adopt. That if someone heard of anyone that they would tell us. From all the pain of infertility and loss came hope in the form of Kimberly. She was the miracle we had been searching so long to find.

Years later after seven hazardous pregnancies and two scary births we found adoption once more. This time it was a son from Ethiopia. He was the one we had been waiting on to complete this family.

There isn’t a way to put into words how much of an impact adoption has on my life. It is like trying to explain how my beating heart has made my life great. My heart has made my life amazing because by beating it has allowed me to live. Adoption has made my life amazing because adoption has been in it. I am so glad that my life has been touched by this miracle.

I have some dear friends, Rick, Christi and Bella who are looking to complete their family through the adoption of a child. Each journey is so unique and for them their journey has brought them to the moment where they are looking to adopt a child domestically. On the face of it domestic adoption can seem so easy, there are so many children without homes and so many families waiting for a child, but it isn’t that easy. You have to wait until you find the perfect match. Much like dating to find the perfect spouse for yourself this too is a long process.

If you know of anyone who is looking to place their child for adoption please consider passing along their website. Help be part of their miracle of adoption.

I know many who come to this blog are adoptive* parents themselves. Celebrate the joy of the miracle of adoption in your home tonight. Whether in the form of a tickle fest or a shared bowl of ice cream. Remember to hold your miracles tightly and give them an extra squeeze from me.

*Even if you are not an adoptive parent but just a parent of an amazing child who was brought to you in a different way other than adoption please follow the above suggestion for tonight’s activities.

The only thing that changed on the 23rd was that Paul is now legally named Paul. Before that his name had legally been Teferi William. We called him Paul from the start because that was the name that we would always call him.

By the way if we had any doubts about keeping his first name Teferi they were solidified during his court hearing when they asked us twice to pronounce his name and they still misspoke it each time they said it.

I know it is confusing and I just wanted to make this post to help carrify it. The AZ birth certificate will allow him to get a SSN and to finish his application for citizenship. Someday he will be a full citizen.

It was nice to be able to extend our gratitude once again. I can only imagine how rewarding this experience was for them. These are the people who matched our family with the perfect little man.

They recognized Paul immediately and both gave him warm hugs and kisses. They wanted to know how his character had changed and how he was doing.

Paul seemed to recognize them but when they would hold him he would extend his arms and say Momma or Dada. Perhaps that was coincidence or perhaps it was him suggesting that he wants to be with us. Either way he is pretty much stuck with us for life. A situation that all of us couldn’t be happier about.

I tried to explain plot and character development to Kimberly but to no avail, she really couldn’t see why in every movie she watches that something tragic has to happen.

I cannot agree with her more. It is one of the reasons I am very careful about movies that I watch and consequently allow them to watch. There are plenty of stories that just have something tragic happen to a character so you are drawn to feel compassion for them and thus watch the movie or read the book.

People buy this sort of thing and Hollywood and publishers are there to fill the void.

Recently there has been much talk in the adoption community about the movie Orphan which came out in late July. Everyone is up in arms because the movie was first released with the tag line that included something about how you can’t love an orphan as much as your own child. Warner Brothers has since apologized and removed that and yet these people still are still offended.

My feelings on this are summed up in three parts:

The first is that it doesn’t convince or not convince anyone of the idea that adopted children/orphans are less loved. There are plenty of people who believe this without ever having heard this. People are stupid and have many saying like this, like the ever popular “blood is thicker than water.” Your friends and family, in my opinion, are made so because of your commitments to each other not a bloodline.

The second is that if someone rethinks their idea of adopting based on a movie that is obviously a thriller movie they are showing that their heart is not really open to it. Adoption is something only some people can do. Many don’t do it for millions of different reasons, all valid in their own way for them. I won’t sit her and say that because I adopted I am better than someone who didn’t, we are all different and we are all driven to parent the children we have.

The third and most obvious is the one my 5 year old picked up on. Sure the orphan is shown in the worst light ever but guess what, that is how they planned it. This is a THRILLER movie. She has to be scary! This is how they are explaining the scary. It is their creative judgement that decides that this make her scary. Great books and movies have all suggested this exact thing. My beloved Anne of Green Gables has a whole scene where the nosey neighbor, Mrs. Lynch, is convinced that Anne, the orphan, will put strychnine in the well and kill Matthew and Marilla, the caretakers of the orphan child. I don’t see anybody trying to ban that book or suggesting that it is harmful to adoption everywhere.

This whole topic makes my blood boil because, as I suggested earlier, my 5 year old gets it that bad things are just part of the plot, why can’t these other people.

I wish I could tell her how much this means to me.

I wish I could tell her how well he is doing.

I wish she knew how much we love her and think of her.

I wish she could know how well he is doing, how much he is loved.

All I know about her is that this baby meant the world to her and in that way we are exactly the same. She is on my mind today and in my heart every single day.

Several weeks back they had their shower and I made them 2 quilts. I have been waiting for them to pass court to show them to you. Here is the one I made for Ezra

And the one I made for Noah

These were the first and only quilts I will ever tie. UGH that was not fun. Although I think it made the quilt look nice and that it was perfect for this design, it made my fingers ache like crazy! So worth it though. I cannot wait to meet these little men in person in July!

If you are thinking that is a long way off then you are thinking the same thing as us. I can’t believe that the courts are moving so slowly, to think that I thought that the two month wait for Paul’s court date in Ethiopia was long.

Mark you calendars and *get ready to celebrate!

*I wouldn’t buy any wine just yet as you will most likely drink it before that date comes.

*BTW this was only rhetorical, Paul is the absolute most perfect referral ever, at least to me. I just love twins though, check out the picture below of me with my assembled twins just to see the joy in my heart.

Glad to have the first one down. We will have them petition the court to finalize Paul’s adoption in the US. Then we will have two more home visits, one at 6 months and one at 12 months. I am glad that it was so easy and I am sure the others will be just as easy.

As a parent you are always so excited when you figure out your child’s cues. As an adoptive parent of a child who is already one that takes on new meaning. Not only did we have to learn about this little man, he had to learn about us. He already knew how to put himself to sleep, but we helped him to find a better way. We let him know that he can now depend on a parent to help him when times are tough.

Paul has been living in America a whole month now. He has gained 1 pound 14 ounces since he has been home. He is rarely turning up his nose to foods unless it is jello, fruit or something cold. He is beginning to take cow milk and eat nutragrain bars. He is so ready to walk and I think the highest number of continuous steps he has taken is 11. We all adore him so much and he loves to give us kisses.