Back on November 6 of this year, Michelle Ransavage traveled to China and was united with her new daughter, a two year-old with special needs that Michelle and her husband, Andrew, named Mia.

The couple, whose adoption is being handled by Children's Home Society and Family Services, had completed numerous background checks and screenings for their homestudy, their USCIS approval and for their adoption agency. Everything came back fine and the couple proceeded on their adoption journey to Mia.

With the length of time that many adoptions from China are now taking, many adoptive parents are having to have their fingerprints for... more

I have one more transcultural adoption article to share with you. Several days ago the Chicago Tribune had this article titled, "Muhammad's special reception". The article tells about Chicago Bears wide receiver Muhsin Muhammad and his wife, Christa, who recently brought home two new children that they adopted internationally from Ethiopia.

The couple already has three daughters and a son at home, and I was not able to find any details about the ages or genders of the two children the couple adopted from Ethiopia.

While the article in the Chicago Tribune is short... more

China has consistently been one of the most popular countries for U.S. parents to adopt internationally from since the mid 1990's. When people think of transracial adoption, many instantly picture a white couple with a Chinese baby, and when prospective adoptive parents first start thinking about where to adopt from, China is often one of the first possibilities that is explored.

The U.S. Department of State reports over 60,000 Chinese orphans receiving immigrant visas through adoption... more

There are so many stories in the media that focus on the challenges of adoption, or adoptions "gone bad" or just plain sad adoption stories, so I thought I would share this feel good transracial adoption story that I saw on Yahoo titled "GI saves Iraqi boy in long-shot adoption".

I am not a big fan of the title of the story, and I cringe internally when I hear adoption likened to "saving" a child, and yet in this story it is hard to argue that the boys life was very much saved through his adoption.

In a nutshell, Captain Scott Southworth of Wisconsin met his future son when he was deployed to one of... more

Most people involved in adoption have heard about the story of the Danish diplomat and his wife that recently relinquished their eight-year old daughter, who had been adopted by the couple at the age of four months.

A new article about this heart breaking story was published yesterday on Yahoo News titled "Can Adoption Children Be Returned?", and after hearing about this story the obvious and painful answer is, "Yes, adopted children can be returned."

There is a lot of speculation about this story, and like most stories in the news, we will likely never really know what happened. The family... more

In my last post I gave some advice about preparing for your adoption related travel.

One of my pieces of advice in that post was to get a good travel agent who has experience with adoption travel.

I have a lot of people that email me and ask if a travel agent is really necessary for your adoption travel. In this day and age, the internet gives anyone who has access to a computer the ability to be their own travel agent in a lot of ways. While it is true... more

Since I have travel on the brain right now, I thought it would be fun to share some of my travel tips and lessons learned from our many adoption trips.

These days, with the high number of international transracial adoptions and the high number of parents adopting domestically who have to travel to another state for their adoption, the majority of transracial adoptions involve some amount of travel.

Travel can be stressful, and adoption related travel can be ultra stressful. One of the things that you can do to relieve some of the stress is to do... more

It seems that one of the questions I hear the very most from people contemplating adoption is, "What does it cost?" Upon hearing what an average adoption costs, many are immediately either highly discouraged, highly disgusted or both.

Coming up with the money to pay for an adoption is an adventure for many adoptive parents. I would say that the majority of adoptive parents do not have a neat pile of cash in their savings account that will cover the entire adoption cost before they start off.

For us, paying for adoptions has always involved a combination... more

This article, titled "When Adoptions Go Wrong", by Newsweek has been making the rounds the past few days.

The article tells the story of an utter adoption nightmare; an adoptive mother killing her child. Peggy Hilt was convicted of second-degree murder after beating to death her two year-old daughter from Russia.

While this article tells their heart-breaking story, it also does a good job showing that there is help available to families struggling with adopted children and that pre-adoption education is essential.

Hilt and her husband had many red flags along the way in their adoption journey. There were several... more

If you are still considering what to buy for your children this holiday season, another great gift idea is something "cultural". All of our adopted children are very proud of where they are from and love to get things that represent where they were born and/or their birth culture.

There are oodles of websites out there that sell cultural items for internationally adopted children. Here are a few ideas I really like and please feel free to leave a comment with your own suggestion.

Princess Designs -... more