Adoptive parents know that one of the hardest aspects of the process is the waiting (and if you notice this theme in my posts lately, you can tell this is not being easy for me!)

Waiting on any given day to be united with your child is tough, but waiting through special occasions, like the holidays and birthdays are even more difficult.

Today is Solomon's birthday. He is two years old.

Well, technically today is the day we are choosing to be Solomon's birthday, as the day he was born is unknown (as is common with children in Ethiopia and other countries where birthdays are not celebrated as they are here and where children are often found abandoned without any background information).

We chose today for a few reasons. First, we talked/emailed with several people, including a medical student who spent a couple of months at AHOPE this summer, and got information on Solomon's development. We took that info and combined it with his heights and weights we have for the past year (keeping in mind that Ethiopian kids are often small and that kids who are HIV+ are often small for their age) and decided that he is just about two years old right now. Everyone that has met him that we spoke with agreed that having him turn two this fall seems very accurate.

We already have two birthdays in early November and don't want to get too close to the holidays and September is always crazy with school starting back up, and October just felt right to me.

As we started to decide which day in October, we quickly chose October 24. October 24 is my Grandma Claire's birthday. She died when I was 10, but I have very vivid memories of her and she was one of the most incredible and loving people ever.

And my birthday is March 24 and Marcus' birthday is April 24, so 24 seems to be a good number for us.

So, even though the chances are good that Solomon was not actually born on Oct. 24, 2005, that is the day we have chosen to celebrate his birth and his life. Today, he is two years old. Today, I miss him even more than usual, and am even more emotional than usual (if that is even possible).

Choosing a birthday for your child is a weird thing. Some people have a really good idea of about how old their child is, and some people have a few year span that could be accurate. In my next post I will write about choosing a birthday for your child and will give some advice on when you don't know when your child was born.