I love to get emails from all parents and prospective adoptive parents (paps,) and often get asked similar questions. In light of my effort to share with the class, I thought I would answer a reader’s recent questions right here in the blog. I’ll be posting her questions along with my answers in separate posts. As always, please comment below or email me at rebeccah@adoptionblogs.com with any comments or questions.

How long were you in Viet Nam? Where did you fly into?

We... more

My mom took a really hard fall last week and walked away with a broken rib. Ella was on her hip at the time and they were going to play in Grandma’s room when a cat skirted by, tripped my mom and she used her body to protect Ella from getting slammed into the corner of her dresser. And she broke her own rib in the process. After falling she was unable to catch her breath to call for help for a good five minutes, but struggled to keep up a façade of everything being ok for Ella’s benefit. But no matter how hard my mom tried to cover it up, Ella knew that something had happened... more

Thanks to Mary over at the Ethiopia Adoption Blog for starting this meme; I love these things!

Four things I thought about adoption when I was a child - I thought I would like to adopt a child when I was older - that adoptions were mainly secretive and the children often didn’t know they were adopted - that most adopted kids were white - I really didn’t know anything concrete about adoption and didn’t know anyone who was adopted growing up

Four things I've learned since then - adoption is a natural, beautiful way to build a family... more

I had a rough night last night. Lots of sadness, lots of emotions, just an all around cruddy time. By the time I forced myself to sleep it was 2:00 in the morning and I wound up getting hardly any sleep at all. But everything got brighter around 5:30 this morning when I was awoken by a sweet little voice from the room next to mine.

Miss Ella was awake with a dirty diaper and stirring. I got right up to see what was wrong because she hardly ever wakes up before 7 am. I was greeted with the sweetest, sleepiest smiling baby who was so happy to see me. I got to hold that... more

Growing a family raises many emotions, questions, fears and dreams. When is the right time? Can we afford another child? What about our children already home; how will they feel? All of these are valid questions and just about every parent who thinks about adding to their family goes through periods of unending questions. Us adoptive parents have it a little different…Should we adopt from the same country? What age child should we request? Will our other children travel with us? How can we raise the funds to finance our adoption? Over the next few posts I will address these... more

My Love Thursday post from last week Was titled “Love Across Generations” and was about Ella’s relationship with my grandmother, her Great Grandma. It was suggested that I get a picture of myself, my mother, my grandmother and Ella…four generations of women in my family. I quickly remembered that we had taken this exact picture at Ella’s welcome home party last fall, a few weeks after we came home from Viet Nam.

As many of you know, my husband, Ella... more

Birthdays seem to be a time to reflect and take some time to think about the year that has most recently passed. As I approach my last year in my twenties, I am so ridiculously grateful that I have happy memories of this past year to wax poetic on. This time last year I was only a few weeks away from traveling to Viet Nam and meeting my daughter for the first time. I was an anxious, excited, nervous, busy, emotional mess. Today I feel just as busy, but much happier, much more grounded and full of so much pride and love for this family that we’ve created.

I feel incredibly... more

Today I just had to write about the incredibly sweet relationship Ella has with her Great Grandma, my maternal Grandmother. Ella’s main caregiver in her baby center was an older woman, and I think this has a lot to do with the fact that she quickly bonded with my Grandma soon after coming home. Now that we have temporarily moved in with my parents and Grandma, Ella’s relationships with all of them have flourished. But today is all about Ella and her Great Grandma and their adoration for each other.

Great Grandma’s not in the best of health. She has suffered through cancer... more

I am incredibly fed up with how often I see people being referred to as “adopted sons” or “adopted daughters”. Every single time I read about someone’s “adopted” child, I cringe. Well, that’s not entirely true; whenever it occurs in an article that is in no way related to adoption and the fact that they were adopted has nothing at all to do with the story, I cringe. If it is adoption related and it makes sense that I know that a person was adopted; that’s ok.

Not too long ago I was pleased to read about Michelle Pfeiffer correcting writer Liz Smith when Smith referred to Pfeiffer’s daughter as her “adopted daughter” in an interview. Pfeiffer educated Smith by making it clear that she... more

Today marked a big milestone for Ella, and an even bigger one for her mommy. We went to check out the child care center at my gym so she could start getting used to it enough for me to leave her there while I take a class. My normal gym routine is to go in the evenings during the week and weekend mornings when my husband is home to watch Ella. Now that everyone’s back to school (my hubby’s a teacher,) and it’s just me and Ella again, I think it would be good for her to have some social time outside of our playdates. Plus, it’s really nice to just get out of the house!

This... more