In my last post, I shared our experience in choosing to adopt domestically after two international adoptions.

We found both international and domestic adoption to be a wonderful way to expand our family, and also found each type of adoption to have its own set of benefits and challenges.

Here are some of the differences we found and experienced when comparing our international adoptions and our domestic infant adoption.

- There was much less paperwork with our domestic adoption, and we did not have to deal with (or pay for) immigration.

- While preparing our family... more

After a successful adoption of an infant from Vietnam, a successful adoption of a special needs toddler from Korea and a failed adoption from India, my husband and I were left trying to find the right adoption program for our family to bring us our sixth child.

Our... more

In my last two posts, I have written about how we found the right adoption program for our family for our first transracial adoption, and then how we decided on where to adopt from for our second transracial adoption.

At that point, we had three biological sons, our daughter from Vietnam and our daughter from Korea. This time, the feeling that our family was complete did not come, and I felt pretty sure that we had more kids out there after Amanda had been home only a short while (she came home in April of 2003).... more

In my last post I wrote about how we found and chose the right adoption program for our family for our first transracial adoption.

Once we got Maggie home from Vietnam, I thought for a short while that our family was complete. Three boys and one girl was perfect, right? It was a big family without being “too” big, we had sons and a daughter, we still had a hand for each child and it all seemed to be just right.

But it didn’t take... more

In the past few weeks I have gotten several emails/comments from readers asking how we came to adopt the children we did and choose the adoption programs that we did. I have written a lot on how to choose the right adoption agency and on transracial adoption options, but today I thought I would share with you the “technical side” or our adoptions, and how we came to make the decisions we did.

I hope that... more

Today’s post is brought to you by the letter “O”, and I am going to write about adopting older children and about older parents adopting.

Older Children – These are the kind of numbers that are impossible to accurately calculate, but a large percentage of all adoptive parents want to adopt a baby, often a baby as young as possible.

At the same time, while there are millions of orphaned babies in the world, the overwhelming majority of orphaned children who are available for adoption are not babies. Many people instantly think of the challenges involved with adopting an older child when the topic of older child adoption arises, and it is true that adopting older... more

Today I am up to the letter "N" in my Transracial Adoption ABC posts, and the first topic I am going to discuss is the ever-popular issue of naming your adopted children.

Naming – How to handle naming your adopted child is one of those hot topics that is often starting discussions and heated arguments on adoption email groups and forums. It is one of those topics that does not have a clear-cut right or wrong answer, as naming a child is a very personal decision. However since it is also... more

I have one more article I wanted to share before I jump back into finishing my Transracial Adoption ABCs.

If you are involved at all in the Ethiopian adoption community, you have likely heard some of the discussions regarding the much-anticipated New York Times article on Ethiopian adoptions. There has been a lot of speculation by adoptive parents and agencies on yahoo groups and adoption forums, in regards to what the article would cover and how it would portray Ethiopian... more

Usually when I write on this blog about transracial parenting, I am looking at and addressing transracial adoption issues from the viewpoint of a white adoptive parent with Asian and black children. That is because that is my reality, and because most often when we hear about transracial adoption, it is referring to white parents adopting Asian, Hispanic, black or other non-white children.

Today, thanks to a reader, I have a really cool article to share about "typical" transracial adoption in reverse. This article, titled, "Love is Colorblind", which was recently featured in the Detroit News,... more

We’re almost halfway through the alphabet in our Transracial Adoption ABCs, and today we are up to the letter “M”.

Media – Adoption is all over the media. Sometimes it is good (here is an example of an adoption story I thought was very well done), and sometimes it is not so good (here is an example of an adoption article I did not think... more