(Please remember that this is just a piece of my definition of adoption. For my full definition of what adoption is, you can read this whole series of posts here.)

With National Adoption month wrapping up tomorrow, the last day of November, I am also wrapping up my definition of adoption. I have this post and then one more to complete my definition of adoption, and then tomorrow I will share some of my favorite definitions of adoption by readers who left comments for the giveaway, and I will also announce the winner.

For this post, I am going to say that adoption is beautiful.

One of the things that... more

(Please remember that this is just a piece of my definition of adoption. For my full definition of what adoption is, you can read this whole series of posts here.)

Adoption is hard. To illustrate my point, here is a letter I wrote to myself last week during an extra-hard day of waiting (and waiting).

Dear Erin,

This is a letter to remind yourself later on down the road (when you will need reminding), that you do not enjoy being in the process of adopting (even though an overwhelming amount of evidence would show otherwise).

You do not enjoy the sick feeling in your stomach that you get early... more

We got some long awaited news today! Our court date for Solomon Tsega's adoption is December 21, which means that if all goes well, on December 21 he will officially be our son, and we will have definite travel dates assigned at that point for some time in January.

Our case was submitted to court back on November 7 and our agency thought our court date would be a little bit sooner than it is, but the Ethiopian courts have been backed up and moving fairly slowly since they reopened in October from the two-month rainy season closure. Many families have been experiencing... more

I recently wrote a post titled "Preparing for the Worst" (which was followed by posts titled "Hoping for the Best" and "Reality is Usually in the Middle").

A reader left a comment on my "Preparing for the Worst" post, and asked how do you deal with challenging issues so that they don't get worse and asked if they could be dealt with.

I wanted to address this question in a post since I think it is an important question.

One... 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

I have been writing about how I believe that transracial adoptive parents need to "prepare for the worst", and yet at the same time, "hope for the best", when it comes to their child's adjustment into their new family.

The third aspect to this is that while you should prepare for the worst and hope for the best, you should know that reality will most likely fall somewhere in the middle.

While there are no firm numbers on these things, it is only a very small percentage of adopted children that end up having severe... more

In my last post, I wrote about why I feel it is important for adoptive parents to try and "prepare for the worst" when it comes to how their new child will behave, adjust, bond and attach after coming home.

On the flip side of that, I also believe that adoptive parents need to hope for the best. While it is good to educate yourself on what challenges you may face, it is also important to be optimistic. Every parent to be (whether by birth or by adoption) hopes that their baby will sleep through the night and will not be fussy.

Every adoptive parent hopes that their child will be one of the ones... more

There is an old saying among adoptive parents that you should "prepare for the worst and hope for the best", when it comes to your child's adjustment into your family, and how your child will bond and attach to you (and how you in turn, will bond and attach to your child).

While I don't know that it is possible to truly "prepare for the worst", I do think it is very wise to prepare for things to be rough. I have heard a lot of adoptive parents say that they decided not to read a certain book or a certain website because "it was too scary". It is true that hearing about how difficult early days with a new child sometimes are can be very scary, however, I think it is even scarier to... more

A recent broadcast on National Public Radio titled "Study: Adoption Not Harmful to Child's Self-Esteem" has been very reassuring to adoptive parents.

With there being so much information, advice and opinions out there that can lead adoptive parents, and especially transracial adoptive parents, to feel like their children are doomed to face significant emotional struggles because they were adopted transracially, this story and study bring some very good and hopeful news.

The broadcast is just under five minutes so please make sure you listen to it, but in a nutshell, a study was just released... more

This Thanksgiving week, Josh and I have talked a lot with the kids about being thankful, what it means to be thankful and all of the very many things we have to be thankful for.

We want our children to be grateful for the lives that they have. Not in the sense that they are grateful that they were adopted or in any way that they are "indebted" to Josh and I, because no child should feel like that. Every child has the right to feel that they belong in their family and that they have as much of a right to be there as all of the other family members. All of our kids... more