In my last post I wrote about some of the pleasant surprises we had in our early days with Belane. In this post I will share some of the challenges that we faced with adopting a three year-old from Ethiopia (she turned three years old on our first day home). Some of the challenges were expected and some were not.

- She was really, really, really anxious about always being near me. I mean she was super anxious. She really liked having a mom, and wanted to be sure that I was not going to disappear. If I closed the door to go to the bathroom, if I closed the shower curtain all the way or if... more

I need to wrap up my little mini-series of posts on meeting our children and our early days together, and all that I have left (for now) is Miss Belane. Since I have already written a ton about meeting her and our early days together (see below), I thought I would share some of the behaviors she had that were challenging, and some of the things that pleasantly surprised us.

Happy surprises in our early days with Belane:

- She liked me! Although I treasured the memories of the first time I had met Belane and spent time with her, I knew that she had surely forgotten that day. I also knew that she was fairly shy, and was at an age common for stranger anxiety. I was deeply in love... more

After meeting Ben and getting to spend some early bonding time with him on our first day together, he chose to come back to the hotel with us that first night, and so started our journey together as family.

The Ben that was shy and nervous around us completely blossomed as soon as we left the orphanage. He was happy and animated, and eagerly played with Legos, crayons and other treasures we had brought. We found ways to communicate, and we were quickly impressed with how smart he was.... more

In my last post I wrote about meeting Benjamin (who was then almost six years old in Ethiopia) for the first time.

After that first meeting in which he was smiley but also shy, one of the nannies said something to the kids, and they all ran off. Ben left us standing there and didn't look back. Josh and I followed the kids to where they were playing soccer, and quickly joined in the fun. Ben played with us, however so did all of the other kids and Ben did not seek us out or claim us in any way.

That is pretty much how that first morning went. We followed the kids and tried to... more

After adopting an infant and a toddler internationally and then adopting a newborn and two older children domestically, we were feeling pretty confident in our experience level.

The next child to join our family was our Benjamin Bekalu from Ethiopia. Ben was about five years old when we accepted his referral, and we felt that he would fit... more

We committed to the girls after that first visit, and although we were supposed to have four to six more weeks of visit to make a gradual transition, the birth mother decided she was "done" right after our first visit, and told us to come and get them or she would put them into foster care. So three days after our first visit, Josh drove to pick them up for good.

It was very overwhelming. We had very little time to prepare. There was no waiting of any kind! We went from, "Would you consider these girls?", to meeting them, to having them with us for good in under three weeks.

The early days were wonderful and difficult all at the same time. The girls were grieving and homesick.... more

I started writing about meeting Amanda, who was two years old when she came home to us from South Korea, in my last post.

The things I had really worried about, such as her being inconsolable or her pitching a huge fit about the car seat or her and Maggie fighting over me, etc. never happened. In fact we went from the airport to a restaurant (we were three hours from home and needed to feed everyone) and as she sat in the high chair and played and ate, it was as if she had always been with us. The waitress asked how long we had had the girls for, and it sounded nuts to say that we had had Maggie for 15 months and... more

With our second adoption, we had Amanda escorted from Korea. Since all we had to do was drive to the airport to pick her up (which was very surreal), we did not have any of the travel stresses that we had with our first adoption. However, I was very nervous about the fact that we were adopting a toddler. I had read all of the toddler adoption books and got myself good and nervous the night before she arrived. I wanted to be prepared for "worst case", but reading about "worst case" scared the heck out of me!

I knew that Amanda had been very spoiled in Korea and had a very loving foster family.... more

While Maggie was a wonderful baby and she was well worth the challenges of her adoption, the process was still a lot more difficult than I expected it to be. As a first time adoptive parent, I was not prepared for the range of emotions we experienced in bringing our baby girl home.

The trip was hard on me. There were a lot of stressful things going on with immigration and adoption in Vietnam at that time and I was very worried about being stuck in Vietnam for an extended period of time. Emotionally and physically I was very tired since I did not have any help or anyone to talk to and it was the... more

As far as attachment goes, Maggie was a baby ready for a mom. She laid comfortably in my arms for the first few hours without a whole lot of emotion either way. At one point I set her on the hotel bed so I could fix her a bottle, and she made the most pathetic squawk of a cry. I hurried over and picked her up and offered her a bottle, and she gave me this look like, "Holy cow, that worked??" I could tell that orphanage life had taught her that there was little use to crying, because it was not going to get her picked up or get her the meal she was looking for any faster.

I set out to teach her otherwise.

She experimented with her squawky cry quite a bit and quickly realized... more