Today is Pregnancy and Infant Loss Awareness Day. In honor of my son Cole, I wanted to share a little about this day with my readers. As my life changes and my family grows, there will forever be someone missing, and I appreciate the fact that on this day, people around the world will take some time to remember my son and all the children who are missed every day.

In 2006, Pregnancy and Infant Loss Awareness Day became official in the eyes of Congress when House Concurrent Resolution # 222 was passed. October has long been recognized as Pregnancy... more

Remember this "Life With Ella" post I wrote when we had been home just 6 months?!?!?! Six months! Oh my goodness, that seems like yesterday and an eternity ago all at the same time. We’re approaching our first Family Day, and three weeks from then will mark the day that Ella first came home. I’ll be able to post a “Home for a Year” post! That is just incredible.

The three of us have been through so much since we all met in a little baby center in Bac Giang. The joys and frustrations of parenting and family life were new to all of us. Now that so much time has passed, we’ve all relaxed a bit as we’ve... more

Continued from here and here.

Although we made the official decision to adopt from Viet Nam again a few months ago, we’ve only recently begun diving into the paperwork required to adopt. We’re finding that it’s not much different (or easier) than the first time around. I honestly assumed that it would be less stressful, but as soon as our home study update packet arrived I realized that my assumptions couldn’t... more

Continued from here

Since I had convinced myself that it was too soon to even start thinking about adopting again, I put the notion of starting back up on the back burner. I went about my daily life and tried to forget about the opportunity that had been presented to us. I wasn’t too successful. About a month after that fateful email came, I sauntered into our living room and popped the question to my husband. I asked him “What if I just email ACS (Asian Children Services, our agency) and find out if there are any spots left for families on the list?” I tried to tell myself that we weren’t committing to anything... more

Get ready Viet Nam…we’re coming back!!! And we are so excited! We actually made our decision a few months ago, but I wanted to wait until the ball really got rolling until I shouted the news from the blog mountaintop. So here it is: We are adopting again!

Here’s how this all came to be…a few months after we returned home with Ella, we learned that our agency Asian Children Services was phasing out their adoption program to focus on their humanitarian work in Viet Nam. I was absolutely crushed. Granted, we had only just gotten home, were not anywhere... more

I am continuing to answer a reader's email questions directly in my blog so I can share with everyone. The other questions that I've answered this week were: Food and Eating in Viet Nam, Wait Times and Expectations, Air Travel and Time in Viet Nam and Our... more

I am continuing to answer a reader's email questions directly in my blog so I can share with everyone. The other questions that I've answered this week were: Food and Eating in Viet Nam, Wait Times and Expectations, Air Travel and Time in Viet Nam and Our... more

I am continuing to answer a reader's email questions directly in my blog so I can share with everyone. The other questions that I've answered this week were: Food and Eating in Viet Nam, Wait Times and Expectations, and Air Travel and Time in Viet Nam. I enjoy hearing from... more

This post is a continuation of my question and answer series found here and here.

What types of food did you eat while over there?

I was extremely nervous about eating in Viet Nam, but it turns out that I had no reason to be. I’m vegan, which means I don’t eat any animal products and my husband is vegetarian. So on top of our already fried nerves, we were... more

As I mentioned in yesterday’s post, the next few posts will be answers to questions that I received from a reader via email. I really do love to hear from you guys and am always happy to answer questions to the best of my ability and share my experiences. I’ll bet that these questions have been thought by others out there in blog land, so it’s my hope that by answering them publicly, I’ll be reaching out to more people. Thanks for reading and as always, please feel free to email me at rebeccah@adoptionblogs.com or leave a comment anytime.

How long was the wait from Dossier to Referral…I couldn’t really tell. And was that expected... more