I have beens sharing my emotions and experiences with meeting our adopted children for the first time and what our early days and weeks with them were like for me. In my last post I wrote about our domestic infant adoption, and in this post I am going to share what it was like adopting two older children domestically.

Our adoption of Mercy and Des was not exactly planned. Marcus was only two months old when we got a phone call from a domestic agency that we had sent our profile to when we were waiting for an infant placement. We were asked if we would consider adopting two older children (with or without an infant sibling who was not yet born). We were not in a position to pay the high fees associated with another infant adoption and I wasn't sure if we really wanted another newborn (ikes!) so I said that we could possibly be interested in the older girls, if they were unable to find a family to take all three children, however I never imagined that they would not find a family to take all three children together.

A few weeks later we got a call that they had plenty of families who would adopt the baby when he was born (months later) however they did not have any good options for the two older girls. On a wing and a prayer, we drove three hours to meet these girls. Although there was no commitment at this point, in our hearts Josh and I had already decided to adopt these girls, and the girls, their birth mother and the social workers (all who were at that first meeting) knew why we were there.

This first meeting was the first time we met a new child (or children) as a family. Josh and I went with all six of our other kids, which I have to say was nice in a lot of ways. The kids were a great ice breaker.

When we first walked into that room, my heart broke for the girls. I couldn't imagine what they were feeling. And my heart broke for their birth mother, as I could not imagine what her life must have been like to get to the point that she was placing these girls for adoption.

It was a very awkward situation. I wanted to talk with the girls and get to know them, but they were of course very nervous. One tried to avoid us, and one tried to scare us off by acting bratty. However as we went outside to play, and the kids started to interact and the adults got to talk, things felt better and better. And when we took the girls home for that first visit, everything felt amazingly normal. Josh kept looking at me and saying, "It shouldn't feel this normal to have them here." We knew that they belonged with us.

Continued in my next post.